Close to two months after giving a high-profile welcome to the stranded Aquarius migrant rescue boat, Spain once again opened its ports Thursday to a charity vessel carrying 87 men and boys saved off Libya after Italy refused access. The ship belonging to Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms arrived in the southern port of San Roque, just across from ...

This summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, meaning people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception: waivers.

This summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, meaning people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception: waivers.

ACROSS THE COUNTRY, A NEW COHORT OF PROGRESSIVES IS RUNNING FOR—AND WINNING—ELECTIONS. The stunning victory of democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Democratic congressional primary in New York is perhaps the most well-known, but she is far from alone. Most of these candidates are young, more than usual are people of color, many are women, several are Muslims, at least one is a refugee, at least one is transgender—and all are unabashedly left. Most come to electoral politics after years of activism around issues like immigration, climate and racism. They come out of a wide range of social movements and support policy demands that reflect the principles of those movements: labor rights, immigrant and refugee rights, women’s and gender rights, equal access to housing and education, environmental justice, and opposition to police violence and racial profiling. Some, though certainly not all, identify not just with the policies of socialism but with the fundamental core values and indeed the name itself, usually in the form of democratic socialism.

Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American woman in Detroit, just won the Democratic primary for the legendary Congressman John Conyers’ seat. Four women, two of them members of Democratic Socialists of America and all four endorsed by DSA, beat their male incumbent opponents in Pennsylvania state house primaries. Tahirah Amatul-Wadud is running an insurgent campaign for Congress against a longstanding incumbent in western Massachusetts, keeping her focus on Medicare-for-All and civil rights. Minnesota State Rep. Ilhan Omar, a former Somali refugee, won endorsement from the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and is running for Keith Ellison’s former congressional seat as an “intersectional feminist.” And there are more.

Many highlight their movement experience in their campaigns; they are champions of immigrant rights, healthcare, student debt organizing and the fight for $15. Intersectionality has grown stronger, as the extremism of Trump’s right-wing racist assault creates significant new gains in linking separate movements focused on racism, women’s rights, immigrant rights, climate, poverty, labor rights and more.

But mostly, we’re not seeing progressive and socialist candidates clearly link domestic issues with efforts to challenge war, militarism and the war economy. There are a few exceptions: Congressional candidate and Hawaii State Rep. Kaniela Ing speaks powerfully about U.S. colonialism in Hawaii, and Virginia State Rep. Lee J. Carter has spoken strongly against U.S. bombing of Syria, linking current attacks with the legacy of U.S. military interventions. There may be more. But those are exceptions; most of the new left candidates focus on crucial issues of justice at home.

A progressive foreign policy must reject U.S. military and economic domination and instead be grounded in global cooperation, human rights, respect for international law and privileging diplomacy over war.

It’s not that progressive leaders don’t care about international issues, or that our movements are divided. Despite too many common assumptions, it is not political suicide for candidates or elected officials to stake out progressive anti-war, anti-militarism positions. Quite the contrary: Those positions actually have broad support within both our movements and public opinion. It’s just that it’s hard to figure out the strategies that work to connect internationally focused issues, anti-war efforts, or challenges to militarism, with the wide array of activists working on locally grounded issues. Some of those strategies seem like they should be easy—like talking about slashing the 53 cents of every discretionary federal dollar that now goes to the military as the easiest source to fund Medicare-for-all or free college education. It should be easy, but somehow it’s not: Too often, foreign policy feels remote from the urgency of domestic issues facing such crises. When our movements do figure out those strategies, candidates can easily follow suit.

Candidates coming out of our movements into elected office will need clear positions on foreign policy. Here are several core principles that should shape those positions.

A progressive foreign policy must reject U.S. military and economic domination and instead be grounded in global cooperation, human rights, respect for international law and privileging diplomacy over war. That does not mean isolationism, but instead a strategy of diplomatic engagement rather than—not as political cover for—destructive U.S. military interventions that have so often defined the U.S. role in the world.

Looking at the political pretexts for what the U.S. empire is doing around the world today, a principled foreign policy might start by recognizing that there is no military solution to terrorism and that the global war on terror must be ended.

More broadly, the militarization of foreign policy must be reversed and diplomacy must replace military action in every venue, with professional diplomats rather than the White House’s political appointees in charge. Aspiring and elected progressive and socialist office-holders should keep in mind the distinction between the successes and failures of Obama’s foreign policy. The victories were all diplomatic: moving towards normalization with Cuba, the Paris climate accord and especially the Iran nuclear deal. Obama’s greatest failures—in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen—all occurred because the administration chose military action over robust diplomacy.

Certainly, diplomacy has been a tool in the arsenal of empires, including the United States. But when we are talking about official policies governing relations between countries, diplomacy—meaning talking, negotiating and engaging across a table—is always, always better than engaging across a battlefield.

A principled foreign policy must recognize how the war economy has distorted our society at home—and commit to reverse it. The $717 billion of the military budget is desperately needed for jobs, healthcare and education here at home—and for a diplomatic surge and humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to people of countries devastated by U.S. wars and sanctions.

A principled foreign policy must acknowledge how U.S. actions—military, economic and climate-related—have been a driving force in displacing people around the world. We therefore have an enormous moral as well as legal obligation to take the lead in providing humanitarian support and refuge for those displaced—so immigration and refugee rights are central to foreign policy.

For too long the power of the U.S. empire has dominated international relations, led to the privileging of war over diplomacy on a global scale, and created a vast—and invasive—network of 800-plus military bases around the world.

Now, overall U.S. global domination is actually shrinking, and not only because of Trump’s actions. China’s economy is rapidly catching up, and its economic clout in Africa and elsewhere eclipses that of the United States. It’s a measure of the United States’ waning power that Europe, Russia and China are resisting U.S. efforts to impose new global sanctions on Iran. But the United States is still the world’s strongest military and economic power: Its military spending vastly surpasses that of the eight next strongest countries, it is sponsoring a dangerous anti-Iran alliance between Israel and the wealthy Gulf Arab states, it remains central to NATO decision-making, and powerful forces in Washington threaten new wars in North Korea and Iran. The United States remains dangerous.

Progressives in Congress have to navigate the tricky task of rejecting American exceptionalism. That means recognizing that it is often a good thing when U.S. global military and economic efforts fail, because they are generally aimed at maintaining domination and control. Without that U.S. domination, the possibility arises of a new kind of internationalism: to prevent and solve crises that arise from current and potential wars, to promote nuclear disarmament, to come up with climate solutions and to protect refugees.

That effort is increasingly important because of the rapid rise of right-wing xenophobic authoritarians seeking and winning power. Trump is now leading and enabling an informal global grouping of such leaders, from Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to Victor Orban in Hungary and others. Progressive elected officials in the United States can pose an important challenge to that authoritarian axis by building ties with their like-minded counterparts in parliaments and governments—possibilities include Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, among others. And progressive and leftist members of Congress will need to be able to work together with social movements to build public pressure for diplomatic initiatives not grounded in the interests of U.S. empire.

In addition to these broad principles, candidates and elected officials need critical analyses of current U.S. engagement around the world, as well as nuanced prescriptions for how to de-escalate militarily, and ramp up a new commitment to serious diplomacy.

GEOPOLITICAL POWER PLAYS

RUSSIA: Relations with Russia will be a major challenge for the foreseeable future. With 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons in U.S. and Russian hands, and the two powers deploying military forces on opposite sides of active battlefronts in Syria, it is crucial that relations remain open—not least to derail potential escalations and ensure the ability to stand down from any accidental clash.

Progressives and leftists in Congress will need to promote a nuanced, careful approach to Russia policy. And they will face a daunting environment in which to do so. They will have to deal with loud cries from right-wing war-mongers, mainly Republicans, and from neo-con interventionists in both parties, demanding a one-sided anti-Russia policy focused on increased sanctions and potentially even military threats. But many moderate and liberal Democrats—and much of the media—are also joining the anti-Russia crusade. Some of those liberals and moderates have likely bought into the idea of American exceptionalism, accepting as legitimate or irrelevant the long history of U.S. election meddling around the world and viewing the Russian efforts as somehow reaching a whole different level of outrageousness. Others see the anti-Russia mobilization solely in the context of undermining Trump.

But at the same time, progressive Congress members should recognize that reports of Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 and 2018 elections cannot be dismissed out of hand. They should continue to demand that more of the evidence be made public, and condemn the Russian meddling that has occurred, even while recognizing that the most serious threats to our elections come from voter suppression campaignsat home more than from Moscow. And they have to make clear that Trump’s opponents cannot be allowed to turn the president’s infatuation with Vladimir Putin into the basis for a new Cold War, simply to oppose Trump.

CHINA: The broad frame of a progressive approach should be to end Washington’s provocative military and economic moves and encourage deeper levels of diplomatic engagement. This means replacing military threats with diplomacy in response to Chinese moves in the South China Sea, as well as significant cuts in the ramped-up military ties with U.S. allies in the region, such as Vietnam. Progressive and socialist members of Congress and other elected officials will no doubt be aware that the rise of China’s economic dominance across Africa, and its increasing influence in parts of Latin America, could endanger the independence of countries in those parts of the Global South. But they will also need to recognize that any U.S. response to what looks like Chinese exploitation must be grounded in humility, acknowledging the long history of U.S. colonial and neocolonial domination throughout those same regions. Efforts to compete with Chinese economic assistance by increasing Washington’s own humanitarian and development aid should mean directing all funds through the UN, rather than through USAID or the Pentagon. That will make U.S. assistance far less likely to be perceived as—and to be—an entry point for exploitation.

NATO: A progressive position on NATO flies straight into the face of the partisan component of the anti-Trump resistance—the idea that if Trump is for it, we should be against it. For a host of bad reasons that have to do with personal enrichment and personal power, Trump sometimes takes positions that large parts of the U.S. and global anti-war and solidarity movements have long supported. One of those is NATO. During the Cold War, NATO was the European military face of U.S.-dominated Western anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, peace activists from around the world called for the dissolution of NATO as an anachronistic relic whose raison d’etre was now gone.

Instead, NATO used its 50th anniversary in 1999 to rebrand itself as defending a set of amorphous, ostensibly “Western” values such as democracy, rather than having any identifiable enemy—something like a military version of the EU, with the United States on board for clout. Unable to win UN Security Council support for war in Kosovo, the United States and its allies used NATO to provide so-called authorization for a major bombing campaign—in complete violation of international law—and began a rapid expansion of the NATO alliance right up to the borders of Russia. Anti-war forces across the world continued to rally around the call “No to NATO”—a call to dissolve the alliance altogether.

But when Trump, however falsely, claims to call for an end to the alliance, or shows disdain for NATO, anti-Trump politicians and media lead the way in embracing the military alliance as if it really did represent some version of human rights and international law. It doesn’t—and progressives in elected positions need to be willing to call out NATO as a militarized Cold War relic that shouldn’t be reconfigured to maintain U.S. domination in Europe or to mobilize against Russia or China or anyone else. It should be ended.

In fact, Trump’s claims to oppose NATO are belied by his actions. In his 2019 budget request he almost doubled the 2017 budget for the Pentagon’s “European Deterrence Initiative,” designed explicitly as a response to “threats from Russia.” There is a huge gap between Trump’s partisan base-pleasing condemnation of NATO and his administration&rdqou;s actual support for strengthening the military alliance. That contradiction should make it easier for progressive candidates and officeholders to move to cut NATO funding and reduce its power—not because Trump is against NATO but because the military alliance serves as a dangerous provocation toward war.

THE WAR ON TERROR

What George W. Bush first called “the global war on terror” is still raging almost 17 years later, though with different forms of killing and different casualty counts. Today’s reliance on airstrikes, drone attacks and a few thousand special forces has replaced the hundreds of thousands of U.S. and allied ground troops. And today hardly any U.S. troops are being killed, while civilian casualties are skyrocketing across the Middle East and Afghanistan. Officials from the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations have repeated the mantra that “there is no military solution” in Afghanistan, Syria, or Iraq or against terrorism, but their actions have belied those words. Progressive elected officials need to consistently remind the public and their counterparts that it is not possible to bomb terrorism out of existence. Bombs don’t hit “terrorism”; they hit cities, houses, wedding parties. And on those rare occasions when they hit the people actually named on the White House&rdqou;s unaccountable kill list, or “terrorist” list, the impact often creates more terrorists.

The overall progressive policy on this question means campaigning for diplomatic solutions and strategies instead of military ones. That also means joining the ongoing congressional efforts led by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and others to challenge the continued reliance on the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).

In general, privileging diplomatic over war strategies starts with withdrawing troops and halting the arms sales that flood the region with deadly weapons. Those weapons too often end up in the hands of killers on all sides, from bands of unaccountable militants to brutally repressive governments, with civilians paying the price. Congress members should demand an end of massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other U.S. allies carrying out brutal wars across the Middle East, and they should call for an end to the practice of arming non-state proxies who kill even more people. They should call for a U.S. arms embargo on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Israel (which presents a whole other set of arms-related challenges), while urging Russia to stop its arms sales to Syria, Iran and Pakistan. Given the power of the arms industries in the United States, arms embargoes are the most difficult—but perhaps the most important—part of ending the expanding Middle East wars.

Progressives in Congress should demand real support for UN-sponsored and other international peace initiatives, staffing whole new diplomatic approaches whose goal is political solutions rather than military victories—and taking funds out of military budgets to cover the costs. The goal should be to end these endless wars—not try to “win&rdqou; them.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE: The most important thing for candidates to know is that there has been a massive shift in public opinion in recent years. It is no longer political suicide to criticize Israel. Yes, AIPAC and the rest of the right-wing Jewish, pro-Israel lobbies remain influential and have a lot of money to throw around. (The Christian Zionist lobbies are powerful too, but there is less political difficulty for progressives to challenge them.) But there are massive shifts underway in U.S. Jewish publicopinion on the conflict, and the lobbies cannot credibly claim to speak for the Jewish community as a whole.

Outside the Jewish community, the shift is even more dramatic, and has become far more partisan: Uncritical support for Israel is now overwhelmingly a Republican position. Among Democrats, particularly young Democrats, support for Israel has fallen dramatically; among Republicans, support for Israel’s far-right government is sky-high. The shift is particularly noticeable among Democrats of color, where recognition of the parallels between Israeli oppression of Palestinians and the legacies of Jim Crow segregation in the United States and apartheid in South Africa is rising rapidly.

U.S. policy, unfortunately, has not kept up with that changing discourse. But modest gains are evident even there. When nearly 60 members of the House and Senate openly skipped Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech when he came to lobby Congress to vote against President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the sky didn’t fall. The snub to the Israeli prime minister was unprecedented, but no one lost their seat because of it. Rep. Betty McCollum’s bill to protect Palestinian children from Israel’s vicious military juvenile detention system (the only one in the world) now has 29 co-sponsors, and the sky still isn’t falling. Members of Congress are responding more frequently to Israeli assaults on Gaza and the killing of protesters, often because of powerful movements among their constituents. When Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, the Israeli daily Ha’aretzacknowledged the divide: “While members of the Republican Party overwhelmingly expressed support for the move, Democrats were split between those who congratulated Trump for it and those who called it a dangerous and irresponsible action.”

That creates space for candidates and newly elected officials to respond to the growing portion of their constituencies that supports Palestinian rights. Over time, they must establish a rights-based policy. That means acknowledging that the quarter-century-long U.S.-orchestrated “peace process” based on the never-serious pursuit of a solution, has failed. Instead, left and progressive political leaders can advocate for a policy that turns over real control of diplomacy to the UN, ends support for Israeli apartheid and occupation, and instead supports a policy based on international law, human rights and equality for all, without privileging Jews or discriminating against non-Jews.

To progress from cautiously urging that Israel abide by international law, to issuing a full-scale call to end or at least reduce the $3.8 billion per year that Congress sends straight to the Israeli military, might take some time. In the meantime, progressive candidates must prioritize powerful statements condemning the massacre of unarmed protesters in Gaza and massive Israeli settlement expansion, demands for real accountability for Israeli violations of human rights and international law (including reducing U.S. support in response), and calls for an end to the longstanding U.S. protection that keeps Israel from being held accountable in the UN.

The right consistently accuses supporters of Palestinian rights of holding Israel to a double standard. Progressives in Congress should turn that claim around on them and insist that U.S. policy towards Israel—Washington’s closest ally in the region and the recipient of billions of dollars in military aid every year—hold Israel to exactly the same standards that we want the United States to apply to every other country: human rights, adherence to international law and equality for all.

Many supporters of the new crop of progressive candidates, and many activists in the movements they come out of, are supporters of the increasingly powerful, Palestinian-led BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement, that aims to bring non-violent economic pressure to bear on Israel until it ends its violations of international law. This movement deserves credit for helping to mainstream key demands—to end the siege of Gaza and the killing of protesters, to support investigations of Israeli violations by the International Criminal Court, to oppose Israel’s new “nation-state’ law—that should all be on lawmakers’ immediate agenda.

AFGHANISTAN: More than 100,000 Afghans and 2,000 U.S. troops have been killed in a U.S. war that has raged for almost 17 years. Not-Yet-President Trump called for withdrawal from Afghanistan, but within just a few months after taking office he agreed instead to send additional troops, even though earlier deployments of more than 100,000 U.S. troops (and thousands more coalition soldiers) could not win a military victory over the Taliban. Corruption in the U.S.-backed and -funded Afghan government remains sky-high, and in just the past three years, the Pentagon has lost track of how $3.1 billion of its Afghanistan funds were spent. About 15,000 US troops are still deployed, with no hope of a military victory for the United States.

Progressive members of Congress should demand a safe withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, acting on the long-held recognition that military force simply won’t work to bring about the political solution all sides claim to want.

Several pending bills also would reclaim the centrality of Congress’ role in authorizing war in general and in Afghanistan in particular—including ending the 2001 AUMF. Funding for humanitarian aid, refugee support, and in the future compensation and reparations for the massive destruction the U.S.-led war has wrought across the country, should all be on Congress’ agenda, understanding that such funding will almost certainly fail while U.S. troops are deployed.

IRAN: With U.S. and Iranian military forces facing each other in Syria, the potential for an unintentional escalation is sky-high. Even a truly accidental clash between a few Iranian and U.S. troops, or an Iranian anti-aircraft system mistakenly locking on to a U.S. warplane plane even if it didn’t fire, could have catastrophic consequences without immediate military-to-military and quick political echelon discussions to defuse the crisis. And with tensions very high, those ties are not routinely available. Relations became very dangerous when Trump withdrew the United States from the multi-lateral nuclear deal in May. (At that time, a strong majority of people in the United States favored the deal, and less than one in three wanted to pull out of it.)

The United States continues to escalate threats against Iran. It is sponsoring a growing regional anti-Iran alliance, with Israel and Saudi Arabia now publicly allied and pushing strongly for military action. And Trump has surrounded himself with war-mongers for his top advisers, including John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, who have both supported regime change in Iran and urged military rather than diplomatic approaches to Iran.

Given all that, what progressive elected officials need to do is to keep fighting for diplomacy over war. That means challenging U.S. support for the anti-Iran alliance and opposing sanctions on Iran. It means developing direct ties with parliamentarians from the European and other signatories to the Iran nuclear deal, with the aim of collective opposition to new sanctions, re-legitimizing the nuclear deal in Washington and reestablishing diplomacy as the basis for U.S. relations with Iran.

It should also mean developing a congressional response to the weakening of international anti-nuclear norms caused by the pull-out from the Iran deal. That means not just supporting the nonproliferation goals of the Iran nuclear deal, but moving further towards real disarmament and ultimately the abolition of nuclear weapons. Progressives in and outside of Congress should make clear that nuclear nonproliferation (meaning no one else gets to have nukes) can’t work in the long run without nuclear disarmament (meaning that the existing nuclear weapons states have to give them up). That could start with a demand for full U.S. compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls for negotiations leading to “nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament.”

SYRIA: Progressive candidates and elected officials should support policies designed to end, not “win” the war. That means withdrawing troops, ceasing airstrikes and drone attacks, and calling for an arms embargo on all sides of the multiple proxy war. The civil war component of the multiple wars in Syria is winding down as the regime consolidates its control, but the sectarian, regional and global components of that war have not disappeared, so continuing a call for an arms embargo is still important. The first step is to permanently end the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s “arm and train” policies that have prolonged the war and empowered some of its most dangerous actors.

There will also need to be negotiations between the regional and global actors that have been waging their own wars in Syria, wars that have little to do with Syria itself, but with Syrians doing the bulk of the dying. That means support for the UN’s and other internationally-sponsored de-escalation efforts, and serious engagement with Russia towards a permanent ceasefire, as well as the arms embargo. U.S. policy should include absolute prohibitions on Washington’s regional allies—including Saudi Arabia and Turkey—sending U.S.-provided arms into Syria. And progressive supporters of diplomacy should also maintain pressure on the United States to back multi-lateral diplomatic processes organized by the UN and others—on humanitarian issues in Geneva, and political issues in Astana. Cutting the United States’ multi-billion dollar arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Turkey and other U.S. allies involved in the Syrian wars would also lend legitimacy to U.S. efforts within those diplomatic processes to press Russia to stop providing arms to the Assad regime.

IRAQ: Congress has largely abrogated its responsibilities even as the 15-year war initiated by the United States continues. Progressive policymakers would do well to join the existing efforts to end—not replace, but cancel—the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, and reopen congressional debate, with the goal of ending funding for war in Iraq once and for all. When President Obama withdrew the last troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, stating that “war in Iraq ends this month,” many assumed that the authorization ended as well. But it was never officially repealed and had no expiration date, and three years later Obama claimed that the then-12-year-old authorization justified the war against ISIS in Iraq. While Trump has relied primarily on the 2001 AUMF, the Iraq-specific authorization of 2002 remains in place and should be withdrawn.

In the meantime, progressives in Congress should support many of the same policies for Iraq as for Syria: withdraw the troops and special forces, stop the assassination program that is the heart of Washington’s “counter-terrorism” campaign and cease sending arms. Congress should end funding to force the closure of the network of small “forward operating bases” and other U.S. military bases that may remain in U.S. hands in Iraq despite earlier agreements to turn them over to the Iraqi government. The U.S. must figure out new ways to provide financial compensation and support to the people whose country and society has been shredded by more than a dozen years of crippling U.S.-led economic sanctions bookended by two devastating wars (Desert Storm, starting in 1991, and the Iraq War, starting in 2003)—while somehow avoiding the further empowerment of corrupt and sectarian political and military leaders.

YEMEN AND SAUDI ARABIA: The ongoing Saudi-led war against Yemen reflects the most deadly front of Saudi Arabia’s competition with Iran for regional hegemony. The United States is providing indirect and direct support, including U.S. Air Force pilots providing in-air refueling so Saudi and UAE warplanes can bomb Yemen more efficiently, and Green Berets fighting alongside Saudi troops on the border, in what the New York Times called “a continuing escalation of America’s secret wars.”

The U.S.-backed Saudi war against Yemen has also created what the UN has declared the world’s most serious humanitarian crisis. Congress’ first action must be to immediately end all U.S. involvement in the war. Next, Congress must reject all approvals for arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE as long as they continue to bomb and blockade Yemen.

Ending these arms sales may be a serious challenge, given the power of the arms manufacturers’ lobby, Israel’s strong support of Saudi Arabia against Iran and the fact that Saudi Arabia remains the top U.S. arms customer. But recent efforts and relatively close votes in both the House and Senate, while not successful, indicate that challenging the longstanding process of providing the Saudis with whatever weapons they want may be closer to reality than anticipated. The House called the U.S. military involvement in the Saudi war in Yemen “unauthorized.” Reps. Ro Khanna, Marc Pocan and others have introduced numerous House bills in recent months aimed at reducing U.S. arms sales and involvement in the Saudi-led assault. In the Senate, a March resolution to end U.S. military involvement in the Yemen war failed by only 11 votes, a much narrower margin than anticipated. Progressive candidates and new members of Congress should support all those efforts, and move further with a call for ending the longstanding U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia, especially military sales and support for the Saudi-Israeli partnership against Iran.

A QUICK GLANCE AT SOME OTHER POLICY QUESTIONS

NORTH KOREA: Progressive elected officials will need to support Trump’s diplomatic initiatives, challenging mainstream Democrats willing to abandon diplomacy because Trump supports it (however tactically or temporarily). Progressives will also need to condemn U.S. military provocations that undermine that same diplomacy, and build public and congressional support for the inter-Korean diplomatic moves already underway. That should include pushing for exemptions in the U.S.-imposed sanctions that would allow inter-Korean economic and other initiatives to go forward. Progressives in Congress can also play a major role in supporting people-to-people diplomacy with North Korea, and they can lead the way in replacing the current armistice with a peace treaty finally ending the Korean War.

AFRICA: Across the continent, there is an urgent need to reverse the militarization of foreign policy, including reducing the size, breadth of responsibilities and theater of operations of AFRICOM. The wide-ranging but unauthorized and largely secretive special operations and other military actions across the continent violate not only international law, but U.S. domestic law as well.

LATIN AMERICA: In Latin America, there is an urgent need for a new anti-interventionist policy, not least to stop the current attempts to take advantage of serious domestic crises in Venezuela, Nicaragua and elsewhere. Progressives will need to challenge the U.S. economic and foreign policies that create refugees from Central America in particular (including the consequences of the U.S. wars of the 1980s), even while fighting to protect those migrants seeking safety in the United States as a result of those earlier policies. Regarding Mexico, Congress needs to fight for a U.S. position in trade negotiations that is not based on economic nationalism, but rather on making sure that Mexican workers and U.S. workers are both equally lifted up. Left policymakers will also have the chance to play a leading role in forging a new relationship with Mexico’s just-elected progressive President Lopez-Obrador.

All of the areas where U.S. wars are or were underway, as well as places where U.S. economic and climate policies have helped create crises threatening people’s lives, also become areas from which migrants are forced to flee their homes. U.S. policymakers must acknowledge that U.S. policies are direct causes of the refugee crises that exist in and around the war zones and climate crisis zones of the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere—and that the refugees seeking asylum in Europe, and the far fewer trying to come to the United States, are a consequence of those policies. So progressive candidates and policymakers should support massive expansion of funding for these victims of war, including humanitarian support in their home regions and acceptance of far greater numbers of refugees into the United States. They must directly challenge the xenophobic policies of the Trump administration that include the Muslim Ban, the separation of children from their families at the border and the vast reduction in refugees accepted into this country. In Congress, that might include introducing bills to cut funding for ICE or eliminate the institution altogether.

Finally, progressive candidates and elected officials will need to continue to craft policy proposals that recognize what happens when the U.S. wars come home. This requires more voices in Congress challenging the military budget because it’s used to kill people abroad and because the money is needed for jobs, health care and education at home. It means challenging Islamophobia rising across the United States because of how it threatens Muslims in the United States and because it is used to build support for wars against predominantly Muslim countries. It means exposing—on the floor of the House and beyond—the fact that the Muslim bans targeted primarily countries the United States was bombing, sanctioning or stationing soldiers in. And it means being clear that protecting refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants has to include ending the wars that create refugees in the first place.

Certainly, we shouldn’t expect every progressive or even every socialist running for national office to become an instant expert on every complicated piece of U.S. foreign policy. And for those running for state and local office, there may seem to be even less urgency. But we’ve seen how the Poor People’s Campaign, with its inclusion of militarism and the war economy as one of its four central targets (along with racism, poverty and environmental destruction), has demonstrated to all of our movements the importance of—and a model for—including an anti-war focus within multi-issue state and local mobilizations. The Movement for Black Lives has created one of the strongest internationalist and anti-war platforms we’ve seen in years—including calls for cutting the military budget, supporting Palestinian rights, stopping the Global War on Terror and the so-called War on Drugs, ending the militarized U.S. interventions across Africa, and linking U.S. military and economic policies with the rise in Haitian and other—predominantly Black—immigration.

Immigrant rights activists are linking movements for sanctuary (and against ICE) with opposition to the wars that create refugees. Campaignsare underway to reject the training of U.S. police by Israeli police and military forces. Battles are being waged to get local law enforcement agencies to refuse Pentagon offers of weapons and equipment left over from U.S. wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere. These campaigns all play out at the local and state level.

So especially for those running for Congress, but really for all candidates at every political level and venue in this country, there is a clear need for a strong, principled position on at least a few key foreign policy issues. And the key to making that happen still lies with our movements.

There are two related stories to discuss today, both on the subject of Intelligence. A word which, needless to say when referring to Washington, refers to "spying" instead of anything remotely like "smartness" or "proper brain function."

Specifically, President-elect Donald Trump has made it clear that he doesn't consider US intelligence agencies to be 100% reliable, especially when it comes to their consensus accusation that Vladimir Putin interfered with our election by disguising himself with a pair of Groucho glasses, then driving a schoolbus filled with Cossacks to various polling places in key electoral states.

But before Hope n' Change dives into the details of the "Russian hacking" story, let's look at Barack Obama's recent claim of advising Trump - strictly as a professional courtesy - that as President he should always trust the US intelligence community.

"There are going to be times," the miserable stain on the Oval Office said, "where the only way you can make a good decision is if you have confidence that the process is working, and the people that you put in charge are giving you their very best assessments."

Really, Barry? Is that how you've conducted your presidency? Not according to the Hope n' Change vault...

Let's review a few fun facts. As president, B. Hussein skipped the majority of his intelligence briefings including the one immediately following the debacle in Benghazi. Barry also had nothing but foreign policy failures, and repeatedly placed the blame on his intelligence agencies.

So why should Trump - or the rest of us - invest our trust in the intelligence agencies who failed to see the rise of Isis? Who missed nuclear weapons development by Iran during our negotiations? Who were unable to connect the dots preceding Putin's many successful aggressions - as well as those of China and North Korea.

These are the intelligence agencies whose keen insights helped bring about nightmare scenarios in Syria, Libya, and pretty much every other country which has mosques. Intelligence agencies which failed to flag September 11th as a potentially meaningful day for terrorists to attack in Benghazi.

Intelligence agencies which, at least according to the administration, found it "no big deal" that Hillary (as freaking Secretary of State) put all of our national secrets on an unguarded personal server just so she could dodge future Freedom of Information Act demands to see documents rightfully belonging to the American people.

All of which brings us back to the "Election hacking" story. The intelligence agencies have now offered up their (ahem) official report on this alleged election-changing, super-sophisticated act of cyber terror, and have found that (cue the shower-stabbing music from "Psycho") Vladimir Putin personally ordered a monumental campaign to undermine our election and put his personal buddy, Donald Trump, into office!

But there's one little problem. While the declassified report is happy to draw this apocalyptic conclusion, it offers virtually no proof. We're asked to accept this poppycock on sheer trust, which would be a lot easier if the Obama administration and intelligence agencies had even an iota of credibility anymore.

But let's look at a couple of important things the report says that we can agree with: there was no hacking or interference with any voting or vote-tallying machines, and the intelligence agencies do not assert that the alleged Russian campaign had any influence on voters or the election. Wow.

It is also noteworthy that the intelligence agencies were able to draw such detailed conclusions considering the DNC failed to cooperate with the investigation, and wouldn't grant the FBI access to their computers. And interestingly, the report fails to note that the sensitive emails eventually released by Wikileaks (again, without direct evidence of Russian involvement) weren't even obtained by "hacking," but rather by a simple "phishing" email sent to John Podesta, in which he revealed that his password (and the key to all of the DNC's documents) was..."password."

The report also states that Putin's evil plan to overthrow our election involved schemes like having Russian newscasts criticize Hillary Clinton more than Donald Trump. Which apparently made a huge impact on the many voters whose primary source of information was Russian newscasts.

We could go on and on (and already have!) but our point is this: thanks to the Obama administration our intelligence agencies no longer have a whit of credibility, nor does their preposterously politicized "Russian hacking" report.

Considering 8 years of wall-to-wall failures, it's not surprising that Americans have decided to turn their backs on alleged "Intelligence" in favor of Donald Trump's promise of common sense.

This summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, meaning people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception: waivers.

This summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, meaning people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception: waivers.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

ROME: Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Wednesday that it is not vital for Libya to vote this year, signalling doubts about a French-led push to hold elections in December to stabilize and unify the North African country.

Italy and France are competing for influence in war-torn Libya, an oil- and gas-rich country which has been staging area for people smugglers who have sent hundreds of thousands of people on rickety boats toward Europe in recent years.

This summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, meaning people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception: waivers.

There are two related stories to discuss today, both on the subject of Intelligence. A word which, needless to say when referring to Washington, refers to "spying" instead of anything remotely like "smartness" or "proper brain function."

Specifically, President-elect Donald Trump has made it clear that he doesn't consider US intelligence agencies to be 100% reliable, especially when it comes to their consensus accusation that Vladimir Putin interfered with our election by disguising himself with a pair of Groucho glasses, then driving a schoolbus filled with Cossacks to various polling places in key electoral states.

But before Hope n' Change dives into the details of the "Russian hacking" story, let's look at Barack Obama's recent claim of advising Trump - strictly as a professional courtesy - that as President he should always trust the US intelligence community.

"There are going to be times," the miserable stain on the Oval Office said, "where the only way you can make a good decision is if you have confidence that the process is working, and the people that you put in charge are giving you their very best assessments."

Really, Barry? Is that how you've conducted your presidency? Not according to the Hope n' Change vault...

Let's review a few fun facts. As president, B. Hussein skipped the majority of his intelligence briefings including the one immediately following the debacle in Benghazi. Barry also had nothing but foreign policy failures, and repeatedly placed the blame on his intelligence agencies.

So why should Trump - or the rest of us - invest our trust in the intelligence agencies who failed to see the rise of Isis? Who missed nuclear weapons development by Iran during our negotiations? Who were unable to connect the dots preceding Putin's many successful aggressions - as well as those of China and North Korea.

These are the intelligence agencies whose keen insights helped bring about nightmare scenarios in Syria, Libya, and pretty much every other country which has mosques. Intelligence agencies which failed to flag September 11th as a potentially meaningful day for terrorists to attack in Benghazi.

Intelligence agencies which, at least according to the administration, found it "no big deal" that Hillary (as freaking Secretary of State) put all of our national secrets on an unguarded personal server just so she could dodge future Freedom of Information Act demands to see documents rightfully belonging to the American people.

All of which brings us back to the "Election hacking" story. The intelligence agencies have now offered up their (ahem) official report on this alleged election-changing, super-sophisticated act of cyber terror, and have found that (cue the shower-stabbing music from "Psycho") Vladimir Putin personally ordered a monumental campaign to undermine our election and put his personal buddy, Donald Trump, into office!

But there's one little problem. While the declassified report is happy to draw this apocalyptic conclusion, it offers virtually no proof. We're asked to accept this poppycock on sheer trust, which would be a lot easier if the Obama administration and intelligence agencies had even an iota of credibility anymore.

But let's look at a couple of important things the report says that we can agree with: there was no hacking or interference with any voting or vote-tallying machines, and the intelligence agencies do not assert that the alleged Russian campaign had any influence on voters or the election. Wow.

It is also noteworthy that the intelligence agencies were able to draw such detailed conclusions considering the DNC failed to cooperate with the investigation, and wouldn't grant the FBI access to their computers. And interestingly, the report fails to note that the sensitive emails eventually released by Wikileaks (again, without direct evidence of Russian involvement) weren't even obtained by "hacking," but rather by a simple "phishing" email sent to John Podesta, in which he revealed that his password (and the key to all of the DNC's documents) was..."password."

The report also states that Putin's evil plan to overthrow our election involved schemes like having Russian newscasts criticize Hillary Clinton more than Donald Trump. Which apparently made a huge impact on the many voters whose primary source of information was Russian newscasts.

We could go on and on (and already have!) but our point is this: thanks to the Obama administration our intelligence agencies no longer have a whit of credibility, nor does their preposterously politicized "Russian hacking" report.

Considering 8 years of wall-to-wall failures, it's not surprising that Americans have decided to turn their backs on alleged "Intelligence" in favor of Donald Trump's promise of common sense.

Dear HR,
currently i am in turkey and I would like to be considered to for an interview with your company. I have been living in Netherlands since 1994 and have the Dutch citizenship. Currently I am living living in Qatar since 2007. My experiences which are highlighted on the enclosed CV include work in design & technical civil engineering and Project Engineering and project management in the construction of the factory projects and oil &gas plants included infrastructures works like road works and Reclamation of the lands and pump station and river project and steel structure works. Currently I am working as technical office manager at al asas T & C company. I have work for woqod project in new industrial area for construction of LPG bottling plant
I have been working at AL Zelal Al Qataria T & C company as projects manager for Qatar rail project by main contractor ALstom (Ware houses and work shops) Also I have been working in the other positions as a follows;
Qatar Venesia storm & Bridge company (operation Manager) for kahrama project DI pipe
CONSTRUCTION Manager for Sulaimaniyah-Iraq Steel plant projet with Tefirom construction company (Turkish Company)
Head of civil department & project manager for project construction of main factory including civil, steel structure, MEP works in new industrial area with Dopet company.
Construction Manager in project EPIC for Desalinated of water network in RasLaffan (Blackcat E & C).
Construction Manager in project EPIC for replacement of V-2003 & INST. Air Cooler in Mesaieed (Blackcat E & C)
Construction Manager for project LPG bottling plant new industrial area for WOQOD in Doha-Qatar (Dopet).
ProjectEngineer in the pumpstation project in Libya (Sirt) for the project the grand industrial river by Metis construction company (Turkish).
Designer and Resident engineer for road & infrastructure projects since 1996 within the Engineering Consultant office in The Netherlands where I gained experiences in different area such as Design, Project Management, Cost,Quantities surveying.
In Iraq i was working as Project Engineer in the project reclamation of the agriculture lands and the river project .
In addition to my work experience in The Netherlands, Libya and Qatar , I worked in Iraq during 8 years as a civil Engineer. I am believe that I possess a unique mix of experience and skills that can definitely help your company in the civil engineering area. Experience, skills, and abilities that I can offer your company include ;
27 years of experience in the civil engineering field in Europe and Middle-East;
Responsible of big project (pumpstation, river project, bicycles ways,road-works and maintenance…pls. you find attached CV).
Above average communication and issues resolution abilities;
Ability to effectively supervise staff and manage an independent budget;
Ability to choose the method of construction and the materials:
Ability to communicate with staff, and motivate them, to increase productivity
Experience working effectively in a dynamic, multi-tasking environment
The enclosed resume provides more details on the above, as well as on other experiences, skills, and abilities that I possess. I am very interested in working for your firm. I think that I meet those qualifications and would like to have an opportunity to meet with you to discuss my background. I can be reached at and look forward to hearing from you. Also I can to speak arabic,english,turkish,dutch.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely
Ibrahim Wafi Said
Tel: 00974-66302567 IMO,Whatsap, Viber
0097450668709 IMO,Whatsap, Viber
Turkey mob. 0090-5550171964

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

This summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, meaning people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception: waivers.

WTI for April delivery was at $90.28 a barrel, down 41 cent, in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange West Texas Intermediate crude traded near the lowest level in 10 weeks after a report showed money managers cut their bets prices will rise. Libya halted some oil production and natural gas shipments amid fighting. Crude oil opens at 90.78 and now trading near day low 90.28.

Crude Oil Monthly Average Production

(click to enlarge)

U.S. crude oil production exceeded an average 7 million barrels per day (bbl/d) in November and December 2012, the highest volume since December 1992. The end-of-year data were reported on February 27 in EIA's Petroleum Supply Monthly. Initial estimates for production in November were below 7 million bbl/d, but revisions based on additional data indicate that production exceeded 7 million bbl/d in November 2012. That was followed by December production estimated to be more than 7 million bbl/d. Increasing oil production in North Dakota and onshore Texas drove the increase in U.S. crude oil production over the last several months (although crude oil production in North Dakota took a dip in November, before increasing again in December). Much of the increase in crude oil production is coming from shale and other tigh (very low permeablity) formations.

* WTI Crude Oil Short Term Technical Outlook

Crude oil 8 Month Technical Chart

(click to enlarge)

US crude oil trading below 200 days SMA 90.42. WTI crude oil created monthly reduction $6.7 on February end its noticeable that US crude oil range is from 90 to 99 from last two months. NYMEX crude oil creates on monthly chart a format of descending triangle in the beginning of an down trend who gives a sign of selling at every high below near main resistance 91.79 in crude oil. You can see fast levels 92.74 and 94.18 If it crossing and giving close on 91.79 continues two days. You can see definite below level 88.80 with more selling pressure after breaking sankou span support 89.83. Fresh bullish trend just can be on $92.74 according to IC kinko hyo green cloud well! All the high levels will prove gammon below 92.74.

On 8 month chart crude oil creates a format of head and shoulders in an uptrend it indicate that crude may glide below 88.80 in short term if it not crossing near crucial resistance 91.01 in intraday. 91.01 is also chikou span on 8 month chart. You can see 94.18 above level if crude oil today close above 91.01. 8 month RSI near 32.83 it when macd below -0.114. Intraday traders sell crude oil around 90.77 for target 89.83 and 88.80 with strict SL 91.01. on 8 month chart new bearish cloud may start below 89.83.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller will reportedly subpoena Randy Credico - the man Roger Stone claimed was his backchannel to WikiLeaks, one day after Credico told MSNBC's Ari Melber that Mueller had previously requested a voluntary interview, which he declined on the advice of his attorney.

"They didn’t call me in, they showed up and they asked me to come in and do an in-person voluntary interview," Credico said, adding "They asked me if I would like to do — we set up a conversation with somebody from the Mueller team and they asked my lawyer if I would like to sit down and do a voluntary interview."

BREAKING: Randy Credico says Mueller's agents confronted him in New York and asked him for an interview pic.twitter.com/Zgeax42K3Q

Melber then reported on Thursday that Mueller intends to subpoena Credico, according to "a direct source with knowledge of the special counsel's outreach," and that Mueller would issue the order in the next few days.

Oddly, Mueller subpoenaed Roger Stone's driver, accountant and operative, John Kakanis in May. Also subpoeaned was Stone's social media expert Jason Sullivan to discuss WikiLeaks. Meanwhile the one man in Stone's orbit with a proven connection to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange - Credico - never got the tap on the shoulder from the special counsel. Perhaps that's because he was "wearing a wire for Mueller," as Stone allegedly accused Credico of in an email?

Stone and Credico's downward spiral

In the home stretch of the 2016 US election, Roger Stone bragged to the Northwest Broward Republican Committee on August 10, 2016 that he had "communicated with Julian Assange." When Stone said this, WikiLeaks had already released the Clinton and DNC emails - which revealed that the Democratic primary was rigged against Bernie Sanders, leading to the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz within 48 hours.

In November 2017 however, Stone backpedaled in a Facebook post, claiming that he didn't speak directly with Assange- and had instead asked then-WBIA Radio host Randy Credico - who interviewed Assange months earlier - to confirm the claim that WikiLeaks dumped the emails during the 2016 election specifically to hurt the Clintons.

Assange made this abundantly clear in a June, 2016 interview with ITV, in which he said there were "more Clinton leaks to come," and that a vote for Clinton was a vote for "endless, stupid war."

Credico has denied being a backchannel - telling progressive publication Artvoicein May "I was a confirming source, but I wasn't a backchannel. I wasn't coordinating with [Stone]." That said, the Wall Street Journal published details in May of an email exchange between Stone and Credico from September 2016, in which Credico said "I can't ask them for favors every other day."

In a Sept. 18, 2016, message, Mr. Stone urged an acquaintance who knew Mr. Assange to ask the WikiLeaks founder for emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s alleged role in disrupting a purported Libyan peace deal in 2011 when she was secretary of state, referring to her by her initials.

“Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30--particularly on August 20, 2011,” Mr. Stone wrote to Randy Credico, a New York radio personality who had interviewed Mr. Assange several weeks earlier. Mr. Stone, a longtime confidant of Donald Trump, had no formal role in his campaign at the time. -Wall Street Journal

[We would note that if Trump had in fact colluded with Russia, and Russia hacked Clinton's emails, it seems odd that Stone would have to reach out to Credico in a private email to obtain some of them.]

Mr. Credico initially responded to Mr. Stone that what he was requesting would be on WikiLeaks’ website if it existed, according to an email reviewed by the Journal. Mr. Stone, the emails show, replied: “Why do we assume WikiLeaks has released everything they have ???”

In another email, Mr. Credico then asked Mr. Stone to give him a “little bit of time,” saying he thought Mr. Assange might appear on his radio show the next day. A few hours later, Mr. Credico wrote: “That batch probably coming out in the next drop...I can’t ask them favors every other day .I asked one of his lawyers...they have major legal headaches riggt now..relax.” -Wall Street Journal

Later in May, Credico told MSNBC's Melber that Assange told him that he is willing to be interviewed by top ranking House Intelligence Committee Democrat Adam Schiff (CA) to prove there was no collusion in the 2016 US election. “He’s ready to show that there was no collusion ... he’s willing to sit with Schiff and be interviewed,” Credico said.

And while Credico has tried to distance himself from WikiLeaks, Stone told Artvoice that "Credico insisted through the balance of August, and all of September, that Assange would publish what he had in October. He did." According to Stone, Credico knew.

Credico countered - saying “I had no idea of any of the material that was coming out. [Assange] wouldn’t tell me, I’m a fuckin’, like, drunk, you know. He doesn’t know me. I’m a big mouth, loud mouth comic.”

“These guys [Mueller’s team] need someone like him to keep their f*cking bullshit story going,” Credico said. ”And then keep the fairytale going that there was collusion and that Assange was colluding with Roger Stone. At the end of the day, there’s no collusion with Russia.”

"I'm going to bury him"

In June, Credico told Manhattan weekly newspaper The Villagerthat he was "sick and tired of Roger Stone lying about him - and more recently, allegedly threatening him."

Credico then told the publication that he had given all of his emails "back to when I was on AOL" to an unnamed "national, award-winning, well-respected magazine with a lot of influence" in order to prove his innocence. He then shared screenshots of what he says are "harassing: e-mails from Stone over a three-month period, but that he had lost "90 percent" of his text messages with the longtime Trump adviser.

In the angry and often expletive-filled e-mails, Stone accuses Credico of “wearing a wire for Mueller” — as in, trying to gather information that could be used apparently against Assange.-The Villager

Stone's insults only get worse from there, alleges Credico - who told the Villager "He sends out e-mails early in the morning in an altered state."

In other e-mails provided to The Villager, Stone blasts Credico as a “maggot” and “drunk cokehead” — and mockingly tells him to go snort more drugs.

On April 8, Stone wrote to Credico: “Do another rail!” adding, “[I] Just put $2,000 behind another ad on Facebook targeting progressives.”

Credico has been open about his struggles with substance abuse.

On April 7, Stone wrote Credico: “You are the last person I would have thought would help the Deep State f— Assange — wearing a f—ing wire. Everyone is [sic] says u are wearing a wire for Mueller.”

“I am so ready,” Stone added in another e-mail to him on April 9. “Let’s get it on c—sucker. Prepare to die.” -The Villager

Stone says Credico forged the emails.

“Sadly, Randy has, as he has with other media outlets, sent you cherry-picked e-mails which in many cases are severely edited,” Stone said in a text message. “Most are out of context or have been doctored. In fact, I have extensive evidence which I will turn over to authorities that demonstrates that he is the one who is threatening me while I have consistently urged him to simply tell the truth," Stone told The Villager in response.

And now, Mueller is reportedly about to subpoena Credico - who, if he was indeed wearing a wire, will probably find the whole thing highly amusing.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller will reportedly subpoena Randy Credico - the man Roger Stone claimed was his backchannel to WikiLeaks, one day after Credico told MSNBC's Ari Melber that Mueller had previously requested a voluntary interview, which he declined on the advice of his attorney.

"They didn’t call me in, they showed up and they asked me to come in and do an in-person voluntary interview," Credico said, adding "They asked me if I would like to do — we set up a conversation with somebody from the Mueller team and they asked my lawyer if I would like to sit down and do a voluntary interview."

BREAKING: Randy Credico says Mueller's agents confronted him in New York and asked him for an interview pic.twitter.com/Zgeax42K3Q

Melber then reported on Thursday that Mueller intends to subpoena Credico, according to "a direct source with knowledge of the special counsel's outreach," and that Mueller would issue the order in the next few days.

Oddly, Mueller subpoenaed Roger Stone's driver, accountant and operative, John Kakanis in May. Also subpoeaned was Stone's social media expert Jason Sullivan to discuss WikiLeaks. Meanwhile the one man in Stone's orbit with a proven connection to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange - Credico - never got the tap on the shoulder from the special counsel. Perhaps that's because he was "wearing a wire for Mueller," as Stone allegedly accused Credico of in an email?

Stone and Credico's downward spiral

In the home stretch of the 2016 US election, Roger Stone bragged to the Northwest Broward Republican Committee on August 10, 2016 that he had "communicated with Julian Assange." When Stone said this, WikiLeaks had already released the Clinton and DNC emails - which revealed that the Democratic primary was rigged against Bernie Sanders, leading to the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz within 48 hours.

In November 2017 however, Stone backpedaled in a Facebook post, claiming that he didn't speak directly with Assange- and had instead asked then-WBIA Radio host Randy Credico - who interviewed Assange months earlier - to confirm the claim that WikiLeaks dumped the emails during the 2016 election specifically to hurt the Clintons.

Assange made this abundantly clear in a June, 2016 interview with ITV, in which he said there were "more Clinton leaks to come," and that a vote for Clinton was a vote for "endless, stupid war."

Credico has denied being a backchannel - telling progressive publication Artvoicein May "I was a confirming source, but I wasn't a backchannel. I wasn't coordinating with [Stone]." That said, the Wall Street Journal published details in May of an email exchange between Stone and Credico from September 2016, in which Credico said "I can't ask them for favors every other day."

In a Sept. 18, 2016, message, Mr. Stone urged an acquaintance who knew Mr. Assange to ask the WikiLeaks founder for emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s alleged role in disrupting a purported Libyan peace deal in 2011 when she was secretary of state, referring to her by her initials.

“Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30--particularly on August 20, 2011,” Mr. Stone wrote to Randy Credico, a New York radio personality who had interviewed Mr. Assange several weeks earlier. Mr. Stone, a longtime confidant of Donald Trump, had no formal role in his campaign at the time. -Wall Street Journal

[We would note that if Trump had in fact colluded with Russia, and Russia hacked Clinton's emails, it seems odd that Stone would have to reach out to Credico in a private email to obtain some of them.]

Mr. Credico initially responded to Mr. Stone that what he was requesting would be on WikiLeaks’ website if it existed, according to an email reviewed by the Journal. Mr. Stone, the emails show, replied: “Why do we assume WikiLeaks has released everything they have ???”

In another email, Mr. Credico then asked Mr. Stone to give him a “little bit of time,” saying he thought Mr. Assange might appear on his radio show the next day. A few hours later, Mr. Credico wrote: “That batch probably coming out in the next drop...I can’t ask them favors every other day .I asked one of his lawyers...they have major legal headaches riggt now..relax.” -Wall Street Journal

Later in May, Credico told MSNBC's Melber that Assange told him that he is willing to be interviewed by top ranking House Intelligence Committee Democrat Adam Schiff (CA) to prove there was no collusion in the 2016 US election. “He’s ready to show that there was no collusion ... he’s willing to sit with Schiff and be interviewed,” Credico said.

And while Credico has tried to distance himself from WikiLeaks, Stone told Artvoice that "Credico insisted through the balance of August, and all of September, that Assange would publish what he had in October. He did." According to Stone, Credico knew.

Credico countered - saying “I had no idea of any of the material that was coming out. [Assange] wouldn’t tell me, I’m a fuckin’, like, drunk, you know. He doesn’t know me. I’m a big mouth, loud mouth comic.”

“These guys [Mueller’s team] need someone like him to keep their f*cking bullshit story going,” Credico said. ”And then keep the fairytale going that there was collusion and that Assange was colluding with Roger Stone. At the end of the day, there’s no collusion with Russia.”

"I'm going to bury him"

In June, Credico told Manhattan weekly newspaper The Villagerthat he was "sick and tired of Roger Stone lying about him - and more recently, allegedly threatening him."

Credico then told the publication that he had given all of his emails "back to when I was on AOL" to an unnamed "national, award-winning, well-respected magazine with a lot of influence" in order to prove his innocence. He then shared screenshots of what he says are "harassing: e-mails from Stone over a three-month period, but that he had lost "90 percent" of his text messages with the longtime Trump adviser.

In the angry and often expletive-filled e-mails, Stone accuses Credico of “wearing a wire for Mueller” — as in, trying to gather information that could be used apparently against Assange.-The Villager

Stone's insults only get worse from there, alleges Credico - who told the Villager "He sends out e-mails early in the morning in an altered state."

In other e-mails provided to The Villager, Stone blasts Credico as a “maggot” and “drunk cokehead” — and mockingly tells him to go snort more drugs.

On April 8, Stone wrote to Credico: “Do another rail!” adding, “[I] Just put $2,000 behind another ad on Facebook targeting progressives.”

Credico has been open about his struggles with substance abuse.

On April 7, Stone wrote Credico: “You are the last person I would have thought would help the Deep State f— Assange — wearing a f—ing wire. Everyone is [sic] says u are wearing a wire for Mueller.”

“I am so ready,” Stone added in another e-mail to him on April 9. “Let’s get it on c—sucker. Prepare to die.” -The Villager

Stone says Credico forged the emails.

“Sadly, Randy has, as he has with other media outlets, sent you cherry-picked e-mails which in many cases are severely edited,” Stone said in a text message. “Most are out of context or have been doctored. In fact, I have extensive evidence which I will turn over to authorities that demonstrates that he is the one who is threatening me while I have consistently urged him to simply tell the truth," Stone told The Villager in response.

And now, Mueller is reportedly about to subpoena Credico - who, if he was indeed wearing a wire, will probably find the whole thing highly amusing.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

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Secretary Michael R. Pompeo met today in Washington with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. They discussed the strong U.S.-Egypt partnership, U.S. military assistance to Egypt, and close cooperation on bilateral and regional security issues, including Syria, Libya, and efforts to advance peace between Israel and the Palestinians. They also discussed the vital role of civil society in Egypt and the importance of the protection and promotion of human rights. Secretary Pompeo and Foreign Minister Shoukry look forward to holding the U.S.-Egypt Strategic Dialogue in Washington later this year.

The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department.External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein.

In Rabat, he will meet with civil society implementing partners. In Cairo, he will meet with Arab League officials to discuss a capacity-building program on conflict resolution. During his time in Tunis, he will meet with Libyan grantees who work on local stabilization.

The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department.External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein.

This year, new hammer blows are following on the Reagan-Thatcher-spawned era of revived Anglo-American global leadership and domination.

The British themselves have palpably failed to cave out any secure or even plausible economic prospects for themselves in the world once they leave the EU. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya all remain wrecked societies shattered by the repeated air strikes that Western compassion and reverence for human rights and democracy have visited upon them.[1]

I’m not sure that Reagan and Thatcher had any desire to dominate the world or lead anyone anywhere in particular. They were simply committed to the notion that government and unions come packaged with their own pathologies. And that free markets and free men got better, though hardly perfect results. That wild notion is presently known as neo-liberalism if I understand that useless term. AKA common sense, let it be said. Attica!!

The Soviet Union struck Reagan as extraordinarily pathological, not to mention that he had had direct experience with the armies of commie pukes in the Screen Actors Guild and elsewhere in Hollywood.

It's a good thing that there aren't any more scum bag ultra-leftist traitors in Hollywood any more. Otherwise we'd have movies being made that are repulsive, moronic, hostile to common sense and common decency, and an attack on all that our ancestors stood for and built.

But apart from that (and I have gone far afield from the modest point Mr. Sieff was making), it’s a witty observation.

The Spanish Eurofighter Typhoon 2000 launched an AMRAAM-type air-to-air missile over Estonian territory Tuesday afternoon. All the Estonians are very shocked.
The incident occurred on Aug. 7, 2018 at around 3:44 PM local time in the Pangodi area of Estonia's Tartu County, which is situated less than 50 miles west to the country's border with Russia.
The rocket is being searched by helicopters.
The Estonian army has started a large-scale search. The flight path, location and status of the missile are currently under investigation. The last assumed location of the missile is roughly 40 km to the north of the city of Tartu.
The AMRAAM type missile's firing range is 100 km, it is 3.7 m long, 18 cm in diameter, and carries a live warhead. The missile carried explosives of up to 10 kilograms (22 pounds). It has a built-in self-destruct for such incidents, but may have landed on the ground.Spain is forced to explain why one of its jets fired a missile during a drill in the airspace of the Baltic country and NATO ally.
"A Spanish Eurofighter based in Lithuania accidentally fired a missile without causing any harm," Spain's defence ministry said in a statement, adding that the incident happened "in an area of southwest Estonia authorised for this type of exercise". "The air-to-air missile did not hit any aircraft. The defence ministry has opened investigation to clarify the exact cause of the incident," it continued. There are no known human casualties. Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas said on Facebook "thank God no human casualties," calling the incident "extremely regrettable."
After the incident, the Spanish Eurofighter Typhoon 2000, from that country's Ala 11, or 11th Wing, based at Mor'on Air Base, safely landed at its base in Siauliai in Lithuania.
So far there is no word on whether the launch was the result of any fault with the aircraft or pilot error. Whatever the case turns out to be, it's definitely embarrassing for Spain, which is among the NATO members that spends the least on defense. It's also not a great look for the Alliance as a whole, which has been under increasing pressure, especially from the United States, to reinvigorate its military capabilities after years of increasing neglect in many cases since the end of the Cold War.
The Spanish jet is part of NATO's Baltic air-policing mission. Neighbouring to Russia and NATO countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania do not have their own fighter aircraft. Therefore the allies in the margin of the Baltic Air Policing mission since 2004 protect the Baltic airspace for their own account.
Spanish Eurofighters have suffered a number of accidents dating back all the way back to 2002, when the crew of a two-seat variant ejected safely after suffering a dual engine flameout. Additional crashes occurred in 2010 and 2017, killing the pilots in both cases, but there have been no other reports of misfired weaponry.
It is worth recalling the incidents caused by the errors of NATO, which led to human casualties.
"MISTAKES HAPPEN"
https://balticword.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/1.3.png
On February 22, 2010
NATO fired on a convoy of three vehicles in Gujran district of the province of Daykundi, killing at least 33 civilians including four women and one child and injuring 12 others while they were on their way to Kandahar.
On April 7, 2011
A NATO airstrike hit a Libyan rebel position near the contested oil town of Brega on Thursday killing up to five people, rebel fighters and a hospital nurse said. It was the second time in less than a week that rebels said NATO had bombed their comrades by mistake. Thirteen were killed in an air strike not far from the same spot.
On May 29, 2011
Afghan authorities said Sunday NATO had killed 52 people, mostly civilians, in airstrikes. In the southern province of Helmand at least 14 civilians, including women and children, were killed and six injured in an air raid. The dead included five girls, seven boys and two women.
On February 13, 2013
A NATO airstrike in eastern Afghanistan has killed 10 civilians, five of them children, and wounded five other children.
On July 20, 2015
At least seven Afghan soldiers were killed by a NATO air strike that mistakenly hit their post in a province south of Kabul in the midst of a battle against Taliban militants. The mistake was likely the result of poor coordination between Afghan forces and the international coalition.
On July 12, 2016
A U.S. airstrike killed nearly 60 civilians, including children, in Syria after the coalition mistook them for Islamic State fighters.
On April 12, 2017
An airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Syria mistakenly killed 18 soldiers from a U.S. The incident was the fourth time since early March that American-led airstrikes may have killed noncombatants.
According to some estimates, up to 200 people died during a March 17 airstrike in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. It was potentially the largest single loss of innocent lives to U.S.-led coalition strikes since the fight against the Islamic State began in 2014.
A U.S. airstrike in a rural area of Raqqa province killed more than 20 noncombatants in a school in March. Earlier, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said 42 people, most of whom were civilians, died in a U.S. bombing in the town of Al Jinah.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a...

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a...

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a...

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a...

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a...

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a...

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a...

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a...

This summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, meaning people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception: waivers.

The French government says it will take in a number of migrants from the rescue boat Open Arms that docked in Southern Spain yesterday.
After spending a week in international waters - the boat - carrying 87 people, including 12 minors, rescued near Libya, was permitted to make landfall in the port of Algeciras by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
The French Presidency says it will take in around 20 of those on board the boat which, had previously been refused entry by both Malta and Italy. France says it is helping as a show of "European Solidarity" after Spain saw a huge increase in migrant arrivals since Prime Minister Sanchez accepted the rescue vessel Aquarius back in June.
Aquarius lead to a diplomatic crisis across the EU as leaders jostled over the burden they faced by the migration crisis. Most notably southern European nations who felt they were taking the brunt of the new arrivals. Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini threatened to tear up EU unity by vetoing decisions made in a June summit on migration unless other EU states gave further assistance with people who arrived on Italian shores.
Spain has taken almost 24,000 refugees and other migrants in this year - according to the U.N. Migration Agency.
What happens next?
Those who have docked from the Open Arms vessel will now face an asylum application process which could take up to two years to complete. It is a laborious process which involves multiple interviews, medical examinations and identity checks where possible.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has previously announced plans for a Migrant Processing Centre in the port city of Algeciras to cope with the influx. The centre would be staffed by emergency services and security forces and will cost around EUR30 million.
A group of French officials from will be coming to Spain in the coming days to begin examinations of individual cases before accepting asylum claims in France from yesterday's arrivals.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Much has been said in the past few months about the sea rescue of refugees leaving Libya in their bid to reach Europe. Stand-offs between Italy, Malta and other countries concerning the disembarkation of people saved at sea dominated news headlines, and shocking images of dead bodies washed ashore on the Libyan coasts were everywhere.
Amid all this, a spotlight was shone on the NGOs saving people from rickety boats or dinghies. Currently, many of the NGO vessels are docked in Malta and permission to leave the port is being denied by Maltese authorities.
The public today has the opportunity to ask questions to those directly involved in NGO rescue operations: Tamino Böhn from Sea Watch, Neeske Beckmann from Lifeline and Markus Groda from Sea Eye.
Michael Grech, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Malta (Junior College), will moderate the session.
The event, hosted by Sea Watch, Moviment Graffiti and Lifeline, is being held today between 6.30 and 8.30pm at the Volunteer Centre, 181, Melita Street, Valletta. Everyone is invited.

This summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, meaning people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception: waivers.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

One had the power to give media and political elites goosebumps. Still does.

The other causes the same dogs to raise their hackles.

The first is Barack Hussein Obama; the second Vladimir Putin.

The same gilded elites who choose our villains and victims for us have decided that the Russian is the worst person in the world. BHO, the media consider one of the greatest men in the world.

Obama leveled Libya and lynched its leader. Our overlords were unconcerned. They knew with certainty that Obama was destroying lives irreparably out of the goodness of his heart.

Same thing when Obama became the uncrowned king of the killer drone, murdering Pakistani, Afghani, Libyan and Yemeni civilians in their thousands. That, too, his acolytes generally justified, minimized or concealed.

In June of 2008, Obama marked his election as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.” Media did not mock their leader’s delusions of grandeur.

All the estrogen-oozing amoebas of mainstream media would do in response to the Obama charm offensive was to turn to one another and check, “Was it good for you? Did he make the earth move and the oceans recede for you, too?”

Recently, Obama romped on to the Third World stage “bigly.”

He delivered an address in this writer’s birthplace of Johannesburg, South Africa. The occasion: the centennial commemoration of Nelson Mandela’s birth.

On that occasion, Obama praised “the liberal international order,” which is founded on inverted morality: Good is bad and bad is good.

Small wonder, then, that nobody—broadcaster Tucker Carlson excepted—was willing to shame Obama for lauding genial thug Cyril Ramaphosa as an inspiration for “new hope in [his] great country.”

President hope-and-change Ramaphosa has gone where his four peer predecessors had not dared to go. He led a wildly fruitful effort to tweak the already watered-down property-rights provision in the South-African Constitution. Theft of land owned by whites will now be permitted.

Other than their modern-day-messiah status, BHO and his hero Mandela share something else. Both were silent about the systematic ethnic cleansing and extermination, in ways that beggar belief, of South-African farmers, in particular, and whites in general.

Does the barefaced Barack care that white men, women and children are being butchered like animals, their bodies often displayed like trophies by their proud black assassins?

An example among thousands are Kaalie Botha’s parents: “You can’t kill an animal like they killed my mom and dad. You can’t believe it.”

The Achilles tendons of Kaalie’s 71-year-old father had been severed by his assailants so he couldn’t flee. He was then hacked in the back until he died, his body dumped in the bush.

The head of wife Joey had been bashed in by a brick, wielded with such force that the skull “cracked like an egg.”

A day in the life of farming South Africa.

Yet, there was Mr. Obama touting the new South Africa as the instantiation of the ideals promoted by Mandela.

Mind you, Obama might be on to something, in a perverse way. As stated, Mandela was mum about these killings, labeled genocidal by the expert Dr. Gregory H. Stanton.

Had he lived to 100, Mandela would likely be cheering Ramaphosa for authorizing a free-for-all on white-owned private property.

You know who’s not ignoring or minimizing those ongoing attempts at extermination and immiseration in South Africa? President Putin.

Russia has purportedly offered to give shelter to 15,000 white South African farmers, so far, recognizing them for the true refugees they are.

But Mr. Putin must be a racist. At least that’s what the cruel and craven African National Congress (Mandela’s party) dubs any nation daring to succor white South-Africans. The very idea that black Africans would persecute white Africans is racist in itself, say South Africa’s ruling Solons.

In fact, the ANC regularly intervenes to set aside findings made by Refugee Boards across the West in favor of South Africa’s endangered minority.

Putin, of course, has a history of such “racism.” Take his “unhealthy” fixation with saving Christians in Syria. Yes, that community is thriving once again because of the Alawite and Russian alliance.

The total number of commercial farmers who feed South Africa is now less than half the number of “refugees” the US takes in each year. To date, “there has been a trickle of South Africans applying for asylum in the United States on the grounds of racial persecution. Almost all have been deported.”

It should be news to no one that American refugee policies favor the Bantu peoples of Africa over its Boers.

As Obama would drone, “It’s who we are.”

Whichever way you slice it, on matters South Africa, Russia is the virtuous one.

Oil markets have entered a brief period of calm but a storm might be looming later this year when new U.S. sanctions are poised to slash supplies of Iranian oil, the International Energy Agency said on Friday.The recent cooling down of the market, with short-term supply tensions easing, currently lower prices, and lower demand growth might not last, the IEA, which oversees the energy policies of industrialised nations, said in a monthly report.Oil prices have rallied close to $80 per barrel, their highest since 2014, on concerns about supply shortages but cooled in recent weeks as Libya regained some lost production and Washington signalled it could give Asian buyers of Iranian oil some exemptions from sanctions for next year.However, the United States said it was still seeking to force Irans oil customers to stop purchases completely in the long run.Iran is OPECs third-largest producer, with output at around 4 million barrels per day (bpd) or 4 percent of global supply.As oil sanctions against Iran take effect, perhaps in combination with production problems elsewhere, maintaining global supply might be very challenging and would come at the expense of maintaining an adequate spare capacity cushion, the IEA said.Saudi Arabia, Irans arch-foe and a close ally of Washington, has pledged intervention to prevent any supply shortage.Saudi Arabia is producing around 10.4 million bpd and could in theory raise output to above 12 million bpd.But such a move would leave the world with virtually no spare capacity to cushion against possible supply disruptions in producer countries like Libya, Venezuela or Nigeria.Thus, the market outlook could be far less calm at that point than it is today, the Paris-based IEA said.Besides supply fears, oil prices are being supported by healthy demand growth that has repeatedly surprised on the upside in recent years despite a recovery in prices.The IEA kept its 2018 oil demand growth forecast unchanged at 1.4 million bpd but raised its 2019 forecast by around 110,000 bpd to 1.49 million bpd.Another factor to consider is that trade tensions might escalate and lead to slower economic growth, and in turn lower oil demand, the IEA said, referring to a trade dispute between the United States and China.REUTERS YK SV 1355

Restored Republic via a GCR: Update as of Aug 10, 2018Compiled 10 Aug. 12:01 am EST by Judy Byington, MSW, LCSW, ret. CEO, Child Abuse Recovery, Author, “Twenty Two Faces,” Byington’s Before It’s News articles on a Cabal Vatican-sponsored international pedophile Child Trafficking Ring: http://beforeitsnews.com/contributor/pages/243/590/stories.htmlThe below is a summary of information from the Internet. It would be up to the individual reader to decide whether or not it is valid. Patience is a Virtue. Having Virtue is a sign of a good moral being. Good moral beings have the power to overcome evil and change the world.Summary:1. In late March 2018 Trump returned the US to the gold-standard (USN) by reverting Nixon’s Executive Order via introduction of the HR 5404 bill. Public disclosure of the gold-standard (USN) would occur after GESARA was announced.2. Several Sources: Banks were put on notice that something would happen this week.3. Bruce: The new ISX (replacing the Forex) was opened on Mon. Aug. 4 and trading international platforms.4. Bruce: Iraq made their official announcement on Mon. Aug. 6.5. Bruce: Last Mon. Aug. 6 there were mini transfers of billions of dollars to Tier 3.6. Bruce: Since Mon. Aug. 6 Tiers 3 & 4 were being paid out on the new Quantum System (but not as yet made liquid).7. The SWIFT monetary system was believed to have ended Aug. 7 internationally, with the new CHIPS system kicking in on Aug. 8.8. President Trump signed the Zimbabwe Zidera bill into law on Aug. 8, making the Zim effective.9. Iraqi generals claimed that they would be paid on the new Dinar rate beginning Aug 8.10. Tony: Since Mon. Aug. 6 Mid-East papers have published that the Dinar would be international on Aug. 8.11. Tony: The Dinar was international Aug. 8. We were waiting for announcement of the Iraqi election recount, after which the Dinar rates were expected to change on bank screens and the 800#s released. That announcement has been moved to Aug. 9.12. On Aug. 9 TNT Chat posted that at 1:45 pm EST Iraqi election results and changes were being announced on Iraqi TV and that Iraq had implemented all 44 recommendations coming from the International Financial Action Organization.13. Bruce: Lower denominations of the Dinar would be available in the US tomorrow Aug. 10.14. Intel Report: The RV remained on track to release and could be expected at any moment (ideally between 11:58 PM EDT and 12:01 AM EDT any day of the week).15. After Aug. 8 there was expected to be movement on the 40,000 sealed indictments filed in federal courts.16. Reported Currency Rates (would change after trading on ISX this week):Vietnamese Dong: $.48 Contract Rate: was $2.00, though said no longer availableIraqi Dinar: Iraqi banks have been paying from $1 to $3 on the Dinar in-country rate. International rate: $4.85, $6 to $7 Contract Rate: $28.50Zimbabwe Zim Bond: $ .16, possibly up to $ .72 (question if needed to take off 6 zeros or not). Contract Rate: as justified on your Humanitarian Program. Zim Bond must be used for Humanitarian needs, with no more than $1 Billion for yourself.Zimbabwe Zim Currency: $1.00 – original value as released on market this yearIranian Rial: Tony said that because of Trump’s sanctions the Iranian Rial was not in the first basket, though it may RV in five or so years. Others say that the Rial was still in the basket with a rate of $3.22 upward - and end up around the same rate as the Iraqi Dinar, with sanctions a cover that released Iran from the old financial system.Malaysian Ringgit: $3.80Indian Rupee: $1.05Chinese Yuan, Kuwait Dinar and Libya Dinar rates were unknown.A. Aug. 9 2018 The Big Call, Bruce:Thebigcall.net: 712-770-4016 pin123456#1.The Zim was effective as of yesterday Aug. 8.2. Iraq made their official announcement on Mon. Aug. 6.3. Lower denominations of the Dinar would be available in the US tomorrow Aug. 10.4. Last Mon. Aug. 6 there were mini transfers of billions of dollars going to Tier 3.5. Since Mon. Aug. 6 Tiers 3 & 4 were being paid out on the new Quantum System.B. Aug. 9 2018 1:21 pm EST Intel Alert:Operation Disclosure: GCR/RV Intel Alert for August 9, 2018Operation Disclosure(Disclaimer: The following is an overview of the current situation based on rumors/leaks from several sources which may or may not be truthful or accurate.)1. The Cabal continued their attempts to cause disruption and division in Zimbabwe. The MDC Alliance was being bribed by the Cabal to destabilize Mnangagwa's government (whom is working closely with the Alliance).2. As a result, the public signing of the ZIDERA amendment bill was being delayed. (It was reported that the ZIDERA amendment bill was already signed behind closed doors).3. According to sources, the situation in Zimbabwe would not affect status of the RV release.4. Tier 3 humanitarian organizations continued to receive schedules to begin the exchange/redeem process.5. Most sources have gone silent in expectation of the RV release.C. Aug. 9 2018 10:50 pm EST,Trump Signs into Law, Anon:"Trump Signs S. 2779 into Law" by (Anonymous) - 8.9.18President Trump signed the Zimbabwe Zidera bill into law on Aug. 8: President Donald J. Trump Signs S. 2779 into Law (Zidera)D. Aug. 9 2018 Update on Gifting Taxes, Anon:https://inteldinarchronicles.blogspot.com/2018/08/2018-taxgifting-updates-by-anonymous.html?m=1The amount of $$$ one can gift in one's lifetime has been extended to $5.6 million per person, with $15K gifted per person at one time. A married couple could shield $11.2 million from federal estate and gift taxes.E. Aug. 9 2018 11:22 am EST Rep. Collins Indicted, First Unsealed Indictment?:Rep. Chris Collins Indicted on Insider Trading -- First Unsealed Indictment?F. Aug. 9 2018 5:04 am EST Balance of Power, Fulford:"The Current Balance of Power" - Fulford Report - 8.6.18https://benjaminfulford.net/Benjamin Fulford, White Dragon Society1. In the real world, spy agencies, secret societies, and armies are subservient to religions. 2. Asian secret societies believe the West has ruled the planet for long enough and now it’s their turn. However, they are divided into several competing groups.3. The biggest is probably the Hongmen, with 55 million members, mostly located in China and in Asian communities around the world. Chinese President Xi Jinping is a member of this group. The Hongmen are closely linked to, but not the same as, the Chinese Communist Party. Their hierarchy is based on meritocracy and not bloodlines. There is a Taiwan-based splinter group.4. The second major Asian group is the Dragon family. This is a grouping of old royal bloodlines with their networks of retainers and their stashes of historical gold. They are strongest in Taiwan, Northern China, and Southeast Asia. North Korea is one of their main strongholds, since that country is the real heir to the Manchu Dynasty which ruled China during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912). They are also strong in Northern China, Japan, and Mongolia. They are the heirs of the Mongol warriors, and any country whose name ends in “-stan,” such as Pakistan or Afghanistan, has a strong Mongol heritage. The Dragon family has close links to European royal families and also believes in a world government, but they think hereditary bloodlines and constitutional monarchies are needed to provide such a government with stability and continuity.5. The Black Dragon Society (BDS) were behind the World War 2 Imperial Japanese push for a greater East-Asian Co-prosperity sphere. This group thought the Nazis would win World War 2 and would proceed to try to enslave and then eliminate the Asian and non-white races, as Hitler indicated in Mein Kampf. The BDS was very successful in recruiting non-European people around the world in their bid to end European/Western rule.6. The Blue Dragons are heirs of the Assassins. They are strong in Persia (Iran) and the Muslim world, especially the Muslims of India. They believe a great leader called the Mahdi will emerge and rid the world of evil before the End Times. This group, though lacking a clear leader, is working towards the common goal of liberating the Muslim world, especially the Middle East, of neo-colonialist rulers.7. There are other Asian groups and subdivisions such as the Shinto-connected Three Legged Crow, but they are not major players in the current battle for the planet Earth and will align themselves with whomever emerges victorious.8. Western society has Christianity. 9. The Scottish Rite Freemasons can be seen as the main secret society in the Anglo world. They are linked to the British monarchy, the British Empire, and non-Catholic Christianity. They are the dominant forces in the Anglo world, namely Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the U.S., and they are working with China and Russia behind the scenes. They support a greater role for Asia in a revamped global architecture, but would rather fight to the death than become slaves to the Asians.10. The other big Western group is the P2 Freemason Lodge. This group controls the 1.5 billion-member Catholic Church and the Mafia. They are also very influential in the military-industrial complex through their control of chivalric orders like the Knights of Malta, the Teutonic Knights, etc. This grouping experienced something of a coup d’état in 2013 when Pope Maledict (Benedict XVI) was removed from office for being a satanic pedophile. Also, under Pope Francis, the Catholic Church is reorienting itself away from its birthplace of Europe and toward Africa and South America, where the overwhelming majority of its followers live.11. The most problematic Western group were the Jews and their secret masters, the satan-worshiping Khazarian mafia. The Jewish secret society, in its pure sense, is based on the story that after Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians, all of King David’s male heirs were murdered. Therefore, to preserve the bloodline of David, his secret service began guarding his female descendants. This is the origin of the custom that you must have a Jewish mother to be considered a Jew. This group has very successfully infiltrated the royal and aristocratic families of Europe. They believe they have a hereditary right to rule humanity given to them by God. Their symbol, as can be seen in many of the family crests of European royalty, is the Lion of Judah.12. The Gnostic Illuminati trace their historical origin to the Greek mathematician Pythagoras (570-495 BC), and their spiritual origins to the survivors of Atlantis, a civilization they say was destroyed by flood 26,000 years ago. The Gnostic Illuminati recruit the geniuses of the ages to their ranks and are opposed to bloodline rule. They claim to have been behind the French, American, and Russian Revolutions and are now working on a world revolution.13. The Khazarian mafia history can be read about in the article at the link below: https://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/03/08/the-hidden-history-of-the-incredibly-evil-khazarian-mafia/ The earliest solid historical reference to the Khazarian mafia is the Hyksos, an animal-herding people who invaded Egypt around 1650 BC. They worshiped a goat-faced animal with a forked tail named Baal.14. This god merged with the Egyptian god Set and is the origin of what we now call Satan, Moloch, etc. Their worshipers seized power in the U.S. and the Western world after September 11, 2001. They have been actively planning to kill 90% of humanity and enslave the rest. Many senior oligarchs are members of this group. This can be seen, for example, in the Moloch worshipers who gather at the Bohemian Grove every summer. Their headquarters are the Rothschild family complex in Zug, Switzerland, but they have many other bases. The key source of their strength is their hijacking of the world’s financial system and their creation of world debt slavery through their money “Majick”—that is, fiat currency—the creation of money out of nothing.15. The White Dragon Society is a loose alliance whose members include European royal bloodlines, Gnostic Illuminati leaders, military-industrial establishment brass, Russian FSB, North Korean Secret Police, Japanese military intelligence, Asian secret societies, etc. The WDS alliance was formed in reaction to the genocidal plans of the Khazarians. Also, they are alarmed at the incredible incompetence of the people who are currently running the planet.16. The WDS is pushing for world peace and a massive campaign, similar in scale to World War 3, to immediately end poverty and environmental destruction. They also want the hidden technology, (for example, the 6,000 patents suppressed in the U.S. for “national security reasons”) to be released in order to launch a new era of unprecedented prosperity and exponential expansion into the universe.17. The key to making this happen is to remove control of the world’s financial system from the hands of the Khazarians. This year’s autumn offensive will be aimed at doing this, and special attention is going to be placed on the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and its subsidiaries such as the Federal Reserve Board, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, Bank of England, etc.18. The Khazarians know that if the true extent of their crimes, including human sacrifice, cannibalism, the poisoning of the food and medical systems, their fomenting of war, etc. is revealed, they will be punished. Let’s make it happen.Updates for last week:Restored Republic via a GCR:Update as of Aug. 9, 2018Restored Republic via a GCR:Update as of Aug 8, 2018Restored Republic via a GCR:Update as of Aug 7, 2018Restored Republic via a GCR: Update as of Aug 6, 2018Restored Republic via a GCR:Update as of Aug 5, 2018Restored Republic via a GCR:Update as of Aug 4, 2018Restored Republic via a GCR:Update as of Aug 3, 2018

Bashar al-Assad won. It’s worth thinking about why the United States didn’t.

By Steven A. Cook

A picture taken on March 1, 2018 shows a member of the Russian military police standing guard between the portraits of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) hanging outside a guard-post at the Wafideen checkpoint on the outskirts of Damascus neighbouring the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta region. (LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/Getty Images)

Earlier this month, Syrian regime forces hoisted their flag above the southern town of Daraa and celebrated. Although there is more bloodletting to come, the symbolism was hard to miss. The uprising that began in that town on March 6, 2011, has finally been crushed, and the civil war that has engulfed the country and destabilized parts of the Middle East as well as Europe will be over sooner rather than later. Bashar al-Assad, the man who was supposed to fall in “a matter of time,” has prevailed with the help of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah over his own people.Washington is too busy over the furor of the day to reflect on the fact that there are approximately 500,000 fewer Syrians today than there were when a group of boys spray-painted “The people demand the fall of the regime” on buildings in Daraa more than seven years ago. But now that the Syria conflict has been decided, it’s worth thinking about the purpose and place of the United States in the new Middle East. The first order of business is to dispose of the shibboleths that have long been at the core of U.S. foreign policy in the region and have contributed to its confusion and paralysis in Syria and beyond.There probably isn’t anyone inside the Beltway who hasn’t been told at some point in their career about the dangers of reasoning by analogy. But that doesn’t mean such lessons have been regularly heeded. The Syrian uprising came at a fantastical time in the Middle East when freedom, it seemed, was breaking out everywhere. The demonstration of people power that began in Daraa—coming so soon after the fall of longtime leaders in Tunisia and Egypt—was moving. It also clouded the judgment of diplomats, policymakers, analysts, and journalists, rendering them unable to discern the differences between the region’s Assads and Ben Alis or between the structure of the Syrian regime and that of the Egyptian one.And because the policy community did not expect the Syrian leader to last very long, it was caught flat-footed when Assad pursued his most obvious and crudely effective strategy: a militarization of the uprising. In time, Syria’s competing militias, jihadis, and regional powers, compounded by Russia’s intervention, made it hard to identify U.S. interests in the conflict. So, Washington condemned the bloodshed, sent aid to refugees, halfheartedly trained “vetted” rebels, and bombed the Islamic State, but it otherwise stayed out of Syria’s civil conflict. Lest anyone believe that this was a policy particular to U.S. President Barack Obama and his aim to get out of, not into Middle Eastern conflicts, his successor’s policy is not substantially different, with the exception that President Donald Trump is explicit about leaving Syria to Moscow after destroying the Islamic State. While the bodies continued to pile up, all Washington could muster was expressions of concern over another problem from hell. Syria is, of course, different from Rwanda, Darfur, and Srebrenica—to suggest otherwise would be reasoning by analogy—but it is another case of killing on an industrial scale that paralyzed Washington. It seems that even those well versed in history cannot avoid repeating it.Many of the analysts and policymakers who preferred that the United States stay out or minimize its role in Syria came to that position honestly. They looked at the 2003 invasion of Iraq and decried how it destabilized the region, empowered Iran, damaged relations with Washington’s allies, and fueled extremist violence, undermining the U.S. position in the region. It seems lost on the same group that U.S. inaction in Syria did the same: contributed to regional instability, empowered Iran, spoiled relations with regional friends, and boosted transnational terrorist groups. The decision to stay away may have nonetheless been good politics, but it came at a noticeable cost to Washington’s position in the Middle East.The waning of U.S. power and influence that Syria has both laid bare and hastened is a development that the policy community has given little thought to, because it was not supposed to happen. By every traditional measure of power, the United States, after all, has no peer. But power is only useful in its application, and Washington has proved either unable or unwilling to shape events in the Middle East as it had in the past—which is to say, it has abdicated its own influence. That may be a positive development. No one wants a repeat of Iraq. In Washington’s place, Moscow has stepped in to offer itself as a better, more competent partner to Middle Eastern countries. There haven’t been many takers yet beyond the Syrians, but there nevertheless seems to be a lot of interest, and the conflict in Syria is the principal reason why.Contrast the way in which Russian President Vladimir Putin came to the rescue of an ally in crisis—Assad—with the way U.S. allies in the region perceive Obama to have helped push Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from office after 30 years, much of it spent carrying Washington’s water around in the region. The Egyptians, Saudis, Emiratis, Israelis, and others may not like Assad very much, but Russia’s initial forceful response to prevent the Syrian dictator from falling and then Moscow’s efforts to will Assad to apparent victory have made an impression on them. Syria is now the centerpiece and pivot of Russia’s strategy to reassert itself as a global power, and its renewed influence in the Middle East stretches from Damascus eastward through the Kurdistan Regional Government to Iran and from the Syrian capital south to Egypt before arcing west to Libya.Israel, Turkey, and the Gulf States still look to Washington for leadership but have also begun seeking help securing their interests at the Kremlin. The Israeli prime minister has become a fixture at Putin’s side; the Turkish president and his Russian counterpart are, along with Iran’s leaders, partners in Syria; King Salman made the first ever visit by a Saudi monarch to Moscow in October 2017; and the Emiratis believe the Russians should be “at the table” for discussions of regional importance. The era when the United States determined the rules of the game in the Middle East and maintained a regional order that made it relatively easier and less expensive to exercise U.S. power lasted 25 years. It is now over.Finally, the situation in Syria reveals the profound ambivalence of Americans toward the Middle East and the declining importance of what U.S. officials have long considered Washington’s interests there: oil, Israel, and U.S. dominance of the area to ensure the other two. Americans wonder why U.S. military bases dot the Persian Gulf if the United States is poised to become the world’s largest producer of oil. After two inconclusive wars in 17 years, no one can offer Americans a compelling reason why the Assad regime is their problem. Israel remains popular, but over 70 years it has proved that it can handle itself. Obama and Trump ran on platforms of retrenchment, and they won. The immobility over Syria is a function of the policy community’s impulse to just do something and the politics that make that impossible.Perhaps now that the Assad-Putin-Khamenei side of the Syrian conflict has won, there will be an opportunity for Americans to debate what is important in the Middle East and why. It will not be easy, however. Congress is polarized and paralyzed. The Trump administration approach to the region is determined by the president’s gut. He has continued Obama-era policies of fighting extremist groups, but then he broke with his predecessors and moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Trump breached the Iran nuclear deal, though he has done very little since about Iran other than talk tough. He wants to leave Syria “very soon,” even as his national security advisor vows to stay as long as Iran remains.Despite and because of this incoherence, now is the time to have a debate about the Middle East. There is a compelling argument to be made that American interests demand an active U.S. role in the region; there is an equally compelling argument that U.S. goals can be secured without the wars, social engineering projects, peace processes, and sit-downs in Geneva. In between is what U.S. policy in the Middle East looks like now: ambivalence and inertia. Under these circumstances, Syria, Russia, and Iran will continue to win.

Steven A. Cook is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His new book, False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East, was published in June.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban, which means people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela cannot get visas to the U.S. But there is an exception called a waiver. Kelly McEvers of the Embedded podcast is here to talk about that. Hi, Kelly. KELLY MCEVERS, BYLINE: Hey. SHAPIRO: Explain what a waiver is. MCEVERS: So basically if you are from one of these banned countries and you can show to the United States that you are not a security risk and that you would face, quote, "undue hardship" if you stayed in your country, you can apply for one of these waivers. And if you get it, you can come to the U.S. SHAPIRO: That makes it sound like this is not a total travel ban. MCEVERS: That is what the administration says. And, by the way, it's one of the reasons that the Supreme Court upheld the ban. But advocates who work with families in these banned countries

One of the most neglected stories today until recently is the civil war in Yemen. Yemen is being bombed by U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia forces in an attempt to defeat the Houthi rebels. In the midst of the bombs, many civilians have died. Many of the same ones who defend Trump are silent on this barbaric exercise of imperialistic aggression. These war crimes didn't just exist in Yemen. They have existed throughout the war on terror. Libya, Syria, and Iraq have been devastated by war as well. Saudi jets readily send bombs that destroy human lives and infrastructure in Yemen. This has been supported by American policy. It shows the hypocrisy of American imperialism. American imperialism desires to promote the myth that it is focused on promoting democracy, yet it is in league with Saudi Arabia, which is a nation filled with repressive measures against the human beings in that country. The recent airstrikes against a school bus killed and wounded many children, many of them are under 10 years old. The Saudis and the UAE has bombed Yemen for over 3 years. What is sick is that the Saudis and the UAE defended these overt war crimes. Massive starvation exists in Yemen too. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported that its hospital had received the lifeless bodies of 29 children pulled from the smoldering wreckage of the bus. Most of these children were under the age of 10, some of them as young as eight. The liar spokesman for the Saudi military, Colonel Turki al-Malki, issued a statement claiming that Thursday’s attack on Saada was “a legitimate military operation ... and was carried out in accordance with international humanitarian law.” American involvement with Saudi in the Yemen war is totally shameful and disgraceful. The war in Yemen should definitely end now.

There is always an artist once in a generation that inspires people and motivates crowds. She was one of a kind and the greatest singer of our generation. She was the one with the Voice for real. She could sing high and low with an exquisite clarity that can never be duplicated by any singer period. Yesterday was the Birthday of the late, great Sister Whitney Houston. Legendary performances, dynamic charisma, love for her family plus her community, and superb music outline the glorious legacy of Whitney Houston. She was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. Many people don't know that Whitney is all Newark and she sang excellently in the church during the duration of her youth. From her first soloist album to her last album, she made classic music. From her debut during the year of 1985, people knew that Whitney Houston was the one. Her classic records give me goosebumps. Throughout her career, she represented the grace, the talent, and the strength of black women. She married Bobby Brown and had one child.

Many of her records were inspirational and promoted uplfitment in humanity like The Greatest Love of All, Step by Step, I Believe in You and Me, Miracle, etc. She worked hard, had fans worldwide, and won many awards. She passed away at February 2012 when I was 28 years old. She was the most awarded women artist of all time. She sold over 200 million records worldwide. Also, people know of Whitney Houston's philanthropy in her life as well. She worked with pop artists, gospel artists (the album of The Preacher's Wife: Original Soundtrack Album is the highest selling gospel album in history selling over 6 million copies. Whitney Houston was part of that album), R&B artists, hip hop artists, etc. Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, and Dionne Warwick greatly inspired her as well. She universally is respected. Whitney Houston had a lot of love and proclaimed it in her music and in her life.Rest in Power Sister Whitney Houston

Laura Ingraham's comments are racist and xenophobic. She recently said that her America as she know it doesn't exist because of massive demographic changes. She criticized legal immigration as well. FOX News is known warehouse of racists, far right extremists, and liars. That is Trump's favorite news network too. She is basically saying that she wants America to be mostly white. This isn't surprising by her since she disrespected Lebron James by saying that he should just shut up and dribble. That's nonsense since any athlete has the right to play and speak up on political issues. Trump wants NFL players to stand for the national anthem or be suspended without pay. Once again, he is exploiting sports to promote divisiveness, racism, and oligarchy. Trump ignores that the national anthem was created by a racist and its original lyrics condoned oppression against black men, black women, and black children. Many football players have knelled in protest. A kneel is an inoffensive protest that doesn't disrespect anyone. It does respect the concept of freedoms like protesting and standing up for principles. Now, my state of Virginia has a state of emergency because racists are coming into my state to defend Trump and white racism. Trump is a white supremacist and a racist, so that is why he defends Confederate statues and white nationalists. Now, Laura Ingraham made xenophobic comments about demographic changes when America originally was not majority white and never spoke a syllable of the English language. So, Trump and his supporters are shameful in their rhetoric. True Americans condemn racism and xenophobia plus defend the right of protesting police brutality. Therefore, this is our generation. This is our land. Our ancestors built this nation literally with our blood. Therefore, I won't let any racist violate my human rights. I will defend my freedom totally.

Black people resent the condescension among some who lecture black people on class when black scholars are some of the greatest researchers of poverty and class issues in the world today. Crime is not based on genetics, but on socioeconomic factors. No unjust crime is right. Likewise, crime is mostly intraracial plus within close primoxity and many of the same ones who use the term black on black crime refuse to talk about solutions or talk about white on white crime or Asian on Asian crime. I am certainly not super rich, but many black people who are now upper middle class or rich know exactly how it is to be poor since they once were poor. Many black philanthropists have helped poor black people for generations and the problem is that some black millionaires do in fact embrace the evil of classism and bourgeois tenets. There is a problem of some rich black people ignoring poverty or mocking the poor, which is wrong and evil. There is no excuse for that. The term social justice warrior is used by far right people to disrespect progressive activists, but promoting social justice is sacrosanct. The vast majority of America know about the poor and many study the poor. The problem is that the 1 percent doesn't want to do anything about it since they believe in neoliberal capitalism and other evils that harm the poor. I do believe that poverty should be researched greatly and solutions ought to exist to fight against poverty as well. Poverty exists among people among every color. Yet, there is a fact that poverty, the prison industrial complex, and police brutality disproportionately harm black people and other people of color (as proven by tons of studies). Therefore, I want to address poverty (which deals with class oppression) and end the racist including sexist structures of oppression too. Class reductionism is no solution since you have to both fight poverty and end all forms of discrimination. You can't do one without the other. Black people have the right to expose and oppose white racism without apology too.

« Hello,
dictator! » The president of the European commission thus welcomed the
Hungarian Prime Minister to the Riga summit in 2015. If Senator John McCain had
caused a diplomatic incident earlier when he called Viktor Orbán a “neo-fascist
dictator”, this was just friendly banter for Jean-Claude Juncker. The
contrast in tone of the diktats imposed upon Greece at the very same time by the
Eurogroup was striking: austerity is no joking matter. Just before Syriza came
to power, German Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schaüble warned
that “new elections change nothing about the agreements that the Greek
government has entered into.” For the EU, there is nothing funny about
neoliberalism: economics is too important to be left to the people. Democracy,
however, is worth a good laugh. The burlesque scene in Latvia recalls another
instance of slapstick: in The Great Dictator,
Mussolini slaps Charlie Chaplin’s Hitler on the back: “my brother dictator!” There is nothing funny about neoliberalism: economics is
too important to be left to the people. Democracy, however, is worth a good
laugh.

How can we make sense jointly of these two simultaneous
phenomena – the rise of the far right, in Europe and elsewhere, and the
authoritarian evolution of neoliberal regimes? On the one hand, we have white
supremacy and political xenophobia, from Donald Trump to Viktor Orbán or Matteo Salvini. On the
other, what can be called “democratic
coups”. Remember Greece? #ThisIsACoup: the “democratic” variation of the
coup requires “banks, not tanks.” The same applies to Brazil, from Dilma to
Lula: a military coup was not needed; parliamentary votes and judicial
decisions do the job. Of course, police violence can still play an important
role in the repression of the social movements that resist neoliberal reforms:
France is a case in point. On both sides, public liberties are thereby losing
ground.

Moreover, there is nothing incompatible between
neoliberal policies and far right politics: the EU has now accepted far-right
governments. Compare 2000, with the sanctions against Jorg Haider’s Austria, to
2018, with Sebastian Kurz presiding over the Council of the European Union. Democracy
is not a political criterion any longer. The EU thus subcontracts the handling of the
refugee crisis to Erdoğan’s Turkey and
to Libya’s mafia-like coastguards. Again, France is no exception, especially
when it comes to migrants. It is true that Macron applauded when Trump, under
pressure from all sides, decided to drop his policy of separating undocumented
aliens from their children; but the consequence is that the US will follow the
example of France: children sent with their parents to detention centers.

Macron may have denounced Italian politicians who
“betray asylum”; but his speech
was delivered just as the French Senate was debating his Interior Minister
Gérard Collomb’s bill restricting asylum rights. Indeed, he also raged against
those who “lecture self-righteously” about solidarity with migrants: “look
abroad!” That is the true meaning of the Italian reference in Macron’s
discourse: French immigration policies could be so much worse – think of
Salvini! In solidarity with the new Spanish Premier, Pedro Sanchez, Macron went
so far as to propose sanctions against European States who lack European
solidarity. But France had just refused to open its ports to the Aquarius
rejected by Italy, and finally welcomed in Spain. Never mind contradictions:
Macron soon went on to borrow Salvini’s words, accusing NGOs of “playing
into the hands” of human traffickers. The French president ostensibly
rejects the temptation of “illiberal
democracies” such as Poland and Hungary – but Europhobes no longer have a
monopoly on political xenophobia. These days, Europhiles often follow suit. The
French president is the perfect embodiment of what can be called “neoliberal
illiberalism”. Europhobes no longer have a
monopoly on political xenophobia. These days, Europhiles often follow suit.

“Leprosy”
and neo-fascism

How are we to define today’s “leprosy”? Chantal
Mouffe’s “populist
moment” won’t do if we are to take into account both sides of the coin. The
philosopher advocates
left-wing populism in response to right-wing populism: according to her,
both have a “democratic nucleus” since they are both responses to “the demands
of the popular sectors,” “from the groups who are the main losers of neoliberal
globalization.” One could argue (as I have) about the “popular”
vote for Trump. But in any case, today, not only can we see that neoliberal
leaders like Macron have no qualms about mobilizing xenophobia, but conversely,
populist leaders such as Trump, Orbán, or Erdoğan, promote neoliberal policies. This is why it seems
misleading to argue that voting for right-wing populists is “the expression of
resistances against the post-democratic condition brought about by thirty years
of neoliberal hegemony.”

Contrary to Mouffe who refuses “classifying right-wing
populist parties as ‘extreme-right’ or ‘neo-fascist’,” I argue that it makes
sense to speak of a “neo-fascist moment” of neoliberalism. Today, we encounter
familiar features of historical fascism – such as racism and xenophobia, of
course, but also the blurring of boundaries between right and left, the fascination
for charismatic leaders and the celebration of the nation, the rejection of
elites and the glorification of the masses, contempt for the rule of law and a
taste for violence, to name but a few. Contrary to Mouffe who refuses “classifying right-wing
populist parties as ‘extreme-right’ or ‘neo-fascist’,” I argue that it makes
sense to speak of a “neo-fascist moment” of neoliberalism.

It is interesting to read in this light Cornel
West’s immediate reaction after Trump’s election. To explain this
neo-fascist resurgence, the philosopher pointed out the responsibility of
neoliberal economic policies, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, that Hillary
Clinton was about to continue: who could disagree? But he also writes: “The
neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neo-fascist bang.” Who can
believe that Trump’s neo-fascism put an end to neoliberal policies? Certainly
not Wall Street.

Contrary to West, Wendy
Brown rejects the historical comparison with fascism, and continues favouring
an interpretation in the light of the “stealth revolution” of neoliberalism
that she has powerfully analyzed as an “undoing of the demos”.
According to this political scientist, “despite some resonances with 1930s
fascism, this libertarian authoritarianism is a novel political formation, one
that is an inadvertent effect of neoliberal rationality.” Such a formation “should
not just be reduced to the idea of fascism or populism.”

This
argument complements Robert Paxton’s:
according to the great historian of Vichy, while “it is powerfully tempting to
call the new president of the United States a fascist,” given all the “fascist
staples” of the new regime, if one takes into account his economic
libertarianism, it makes more sense to call him a “plutocrat.”

Umbrella terms

These
are serious objections, because there are indeed real differences between
historical fascism and today’s neo-fascism. But is this not the very definition
of Weberian ideal-types, such as feudalism or bureaucracy? The terms we use to
think about the social world are umbrella terms regrouping empirical realities
from diverse historical contexts – because of their similarities, and despite
their differences. That is how concepts work.

This is
true of fascism or populism, as it is of capitalism or neoliberalism itself. As
Wendy Brown rightly points out, Trump’s protectionism is but a neoliberal variation, just like German ordoliberalism can be approached as “the
other neoliberalism”, despite differences with IMF ideology. In the same
way as there are different forms of neoliberalism, distinct from but related to
traditional economic liberalism, neo-fascism can be approached in its
contemporary specificity with historical echoes. And instead of opposing the
two readings (either neoliberalism or neo-fascism ?) – why not then think of a neo-fascist moment of neoliberalism?

An
approach in terms of “moment” is a way to insist on the historical logic of
such concepts. In other words, there is no necessary link between capitalism
(today neoliberalism) and fascism (here neo-fascism) –any more than there is with
democracy, of course, contrary to the dominant discourse after the fall of the
Berlin Wall. One need only remember that Tony Blair and José Luis Zapatero,
when they converted social democracy to neoliberalism, far from riding the
xenophobic wave, advocated opening the borders to economic migrants. More
recently, the German
Chancellor was both “Kaiser Merkel” in the spring of 2015 (when imposing
ordoliberal austerity on the Syriza government in Greece), and “Mutti Angela”
in the fall (when she opened the borders to over a million Syrian refugees).
Neoliberalism can go both ways. But these moments of liberal illiberalism seem
to belong to the past. The German Chancellor was both “Kaiser Merkel” in the spring of 2015 ... and “Mutti Angela”
in the fall.

Calling a spade a spade

Why
speak of neo-fascism? The answer is pragmatic: because today we need to call a
spade a spade. Refusing to name neo-fascism is a way to refuse acting against
it. The theoretical scruples of a few can be used as a political pretext of
inertia by the many. Euphemizing the harsh reality of contemporary neo-fascism
can become an obstacle when we need to mobilize a kind of anti-fascism that,
far from serving as a democratic alibi for current economic policies, clearly
points out the responsibility of neoliberalism for the rise of neo-fascism. As
a consequence, there is no need to entertain the illusion that populism, which
is a symptom of neoliberalism, might be the cure against it. Conversely, we
have to accept that neoliberals like Macron are no antidotes to the far right:
his immigration policies are not fundamentally different from Salvini’s. Both
defend “Fortress Europe”.

In a
word, there is nothing anachronistic about singing “Bella Ciao” today –
providing that we update its meaning: we should not reserve this anti-fascist treatment
to the current Italian Minister of the Interior, head of the Lega. It equally
applies to his predecessor, Marco
Minniti, from the Democratic Party, and to his French colleague who left
the Socialist Party for Macron’s movement, En Marche – although Gérard
Collomb apparently complains that he is sick and tired of playing the role
of a fascist.

Maybe
these politicians need to be told what they are doing in so many words, in the
hope, if not that their weariness might induce some seachange on their part,
but that ideological clarity will help us develop alternative strategies.

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On this week’s episode of my podcast, I Have to Ask, I spoke to David D. Kirkpatrick, an international correspondent for the New York Times and the author of the new book Into The Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East. Currently based in London, Kirkpatrick reported extensively throughout the Middle East for the Times, especially in Egypt, where he lived with his family during the fall of Hosni Mubarak. His book is a portrait of Egypt during the Arab Spring, as well as an examination of the ways that Egypt’s depressing path over the past several years has both initiated and mirrored the path of the region as a whole.

Below is an edited excerpt from the show. In it, we discuss exactly where the Egyptian revolution went off the rails, the ways in which American presidents have differed in their approach to the Middle East, and how the Obama administration helped undermine the Arab Spring.

You can find links to every episode here; the entire audio interview is below. Please subscribe to I Have to Ask wherever you get your podcasts.

* * *

Isaac Chotiner: Why, throughout history, has Egypt been such an important country to the Middle East?

David D. Kirkpatrick: Well, 1 in 4 Arabic speakers live in Egypt. So, Egypt is by far the giant of the region, and for a long time, it was the most advanced country, the largest economy, the most influential historically. The Nile is an extraordinary thing in a desert region like that, and then on top of that, over the last hundred years or so, you add the Suez Canal, which makes it a gateway for commerce. So for Arab culture, for history, for geopolitics, it’s an extraordinarily influential place.

When did you get a sense that Hosni Mubarak’s rule was teetering and he really could fall?

There was a moment several days into the [2011 Arab Spring] protests when an anonymous spokesman for the military came out on state television, and said that we will not harm civilians, we are going to respect the legitimate demands of the people. And it was a heck of a thing because Hosni Mubarak was nominally still president and yet his military had clearly broken with him. And I thought to myself, well, it’s over, he’s toast. But my editors prevailed on me that things might be more complicated, as indeed they were. We couldn’t yet be sure that it wasn’t some sort of hoax, that the military wasn’t waiting for orders, that this wasn’t some sort of a ruse, and indeed, he hung on for roughly another 10 days after that before he was finally gone. But in retrospect, after that moment, when the military publicly broke with him, when they endorsed what they referred to as the demands of the people and they did so evidently without telling him, he was dead. He was over.

The reason I’m dwelling on that is because the sequence of events has become somewhat mythologized. After that point, once it was really pretty clear that Mubarak was on his way out, President Obama for the first time began to say he ought to go. But the truth is, the American government didn’t really, in any meaningful way, break with Mubarak until it was absolutely clear that he was no longer viable.

You write that you struggled not to sound “starry-eyed” about Tahrir Square and the uprising against Mubarak. Can you talk about the challenge of being a journalist when something like that is going on?

The thing of it is that what happened in Tahrir Square in 2011 really was kind of a miracle, and there’s almost no way to sugarcoat that. It was just an extraordinary thing because what defined that moment was a sense of solidarity bringing together people who have almost nothing in common. So what you saw in Tahrir Square as it really got going was not only young people but also old people, and not only rich people but also poor people, and not only Islamists but also Christians.

They were setting up communal kitchens, they were distributing food, they were running checkpoints, and unlike the Egyptian police, who were so routinely abusive, their checkpoints were very polite. They apologized as they patted you down, and yet they made sure that no one brought in any weapons. At night, they had poetry readings. It was a lovely, lovely time, and it’s hard even now to describe that without sounding like you’re falling for something.

After Mubarak fell, when did you first get a sense that things were going to go in a direction that culminate where they are today—with Egypt under a pretty brutal military dictatorship?

After Egypt had held several successful parliamentary elections and their first free presidential election, and then held a fair and free referendum to establish a new constitution, I thought they really had a chance. And not just me, the American Embassy did too. I remember very vividly attending an off-the-record briefing at the embassy in March of 2013 and they were saying that they thought military intervention was “extraordinarily unlikely.” So I was skeptical, as late as June of 2013 if I’m honest, that the Egyptian people would allow their hard-won democracy to be squashed, and in that, I was totally wrong.

Why do you think they did let that happen, if in fact they did and it wasn’t sort of forced upon them?

If in fact they did. That’s the interesting question. You know, as those 30 months of freedom went on, there was a phenomenon that’s a little bit abstract but I came to think of it like this: Everybody in Egypt said they wanted democracy. They said they wanted pluralism. They looked at the governments of the West and they wanted that kind of a government. Not because they thought it was Western, but because they thought that’s what they deserved.

But they were afraid that some other group, some other constituency, was going to rig the system, was going to hog all the power and run things the way Mubarak had run things. So the Islamists were afraid of the old regime, the liberals were afraid of the Islamists, and for a while, the military was afraid of the people in the street. And those fears kept things in balance for a while, but then as the politics began to set in, as it began to be like two different factions fighting for power, the civilians became divided.

Your book presents a pretty intriguing portrait of Mohammed Morsi, the man who was elected president in 2012 from the Muslim Brotherhood, as a very flawed leader and person. Do you think that someone who was more competent could have taken Egypt on a different course, or whether a military rule was inevitable?

I don’t think it was inevitable. I don’t think anything about this was inevitable. I know that the person who is now president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, was telling American officials but also his Egyptian confidants, well into the Morsi presidency that he was happy to have a Muslim Brother as the fairly elected president of Egypt.

Could a more competent president have pulled it off? He was not the most competent possible president. It’s easy to imagine a wilier or more strategic leader, or even a better politician, in that role. I found it frankly sort of winning that he was such an amateur. When you think that Egypt is going through this historic change, there’s something sort of sweet about the fact that they’ve cast aside the old order and drafted a civilian with no experience, from out of nowhere, to run the government. The downside, of course, was he didn’t really know how to run the government.

What were his biggest mistakes?

Well, bar none, his biggest mistake was in November of 2012. He felt that the constitutional court was poised to wipe away a draft constitution and the assembly that had drafted it, and to forestall that, he sent his spokesman out on television to read a proclamation that his rulings were above the court’s. So it looked to all the world like he had made himself a dictator. It looked even to me at the time like he had made himself the dictator. Now, he was only asking to have this authority for a period of weeks, until the constitution was passed, and in his defense, the courts really seemed to be out to get him. I mean, he was probably right about that. But his tactic, this unilateral self-aggregation of power, was ham-fisted and in retrospect, stupid.

And what was the ultimate breaking point that you think caused Sisi and the military to take the country back over?

I think that’s when it began. I’m not sure we’re going to find a single moment, but if you look at it from Sisi’s point of view, during those final months, the Persian Gulf states were saying, “Please take out Morsi, we’ve got a lot of money and we’ll bankroll this thing if you do.” The liberals inside Egypt were so afraid of the Islamists, they were saying, “Please take out Morsi, we will help justify this to the world and call it a revolution if you do.” The businessmen of the old elite inside Egypt were saying, “We feel like our livelihoods are at stake here. Our enterprises are at stake here. We think you should take out Morsi.”

So a lot of people were saying, “Come on, Sisi, just do this.” Nobody was really saying there’s going to be a price if you do. And under those circumstances, you know, maybe George Washington, there may be someone out there who would say, you know what, I’m going to turn down this easy opportunity to take all the power in my country. But that person was not Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

In your book, there’s certainly a cynicism to Obama, but he comes across as less cynical than the American military, which wanted to deal with Sisi, less cynical than his defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, and even his secretary of state, John Kerry. Do you think that’s a fair characterization, and did that surprise you at all? It seems like Obama was sort of more willing to try to make things work with Morsi and less enthusiastic about the coup.

It’s certainly true that Obama was more willing to make things work with Morsi. You know, you’re using the word cynical, and I’m not sure that’s the one that I would use. Some of the people who were most sympathetic to the coup were in their own way ideological. If you look at the current secretary of defense, James Mattis, he was convinced no matter what anyone told him that the Muslim Brotherhood was effectively al-Qaida. And if you take that as your outlook, then you’re being idealistic when you say the military should remove this menace. So I’m not sure it’s a case of cynicism. But certainly down to the wire, as things got complicated in Egypt, Obama thought that the best outcome was to avoid Morsi’s removal and try to keep the political process going, and there were people around him that had long ago given up on that, and I believe were probably signaling to the Egyptians that they had long ago given up on that.

Right, although Obama wasn’t willing to go to the mat for it.

No. After the military removed Morsi, I have in the book an account of a meeting on July 4, 2013, in the White House, and Obama comes into the room and says right at the outset, “Well, obviously we can’t call this a coup,” because that would have necessitated cutting off aid to the Egyptian military. And then someone else reopens the question and says, you know, “You could call it a coup without actually demanding that they reinstate Morsi.” And that gets Obama’s interest. He thinks about it. And it’s, you know, there’s some back and forth. Even Gen. [Martin] Dempsey from the Joint Chiefs of Staff said at the time, “Look, aren’t we going to lose creditability if we don’t call what is obviously a coup a coup?” But in the final hour, Obama clearly chose the more pragmatic route, which was also the more popular route inside his government, which was to not call it a coup and thus recognize it.

Mattis has a reputation now as this scholar warrior who sits in his library when he’s not working and reads all this stuff on warfare and is considered by a lot of liberals to be the most heroic figure in the Trump administration. The portrait in your book is a little bit more simple-minded, sort of almost shockingly simple-minded.

You know, I agree with you. I’ve found the portrait that is emerging from the media now to be at odds with his attitude specifically toward the Middle East and political Islam. His statements during the interregnum, when he was no longer in the military and not yet in the White House, he spoke quite a bit publicly about his thoughts on those subjects and it’s very clear that he considers Islam itself to be troubled and somewhat problematic. [His thinking is] a little bit of a more sophisticated form of the kind of thinking that we also saw from Gen. Mike Flynn, the former national security adviser.

How much of an impact did the Egyptian revolution and then the coup a couple years later have on the rest of the region? And do you think that if things had gone differently in Egypt, we might be seeing a happier story in various places in the Middle East?

From where I stood, it seemed like the coup in Egypt cast a pretty long shadow. It’s hard to remember now, but as of June of 2013, it still looked like things might turn out OK in Syria, and it looked quite a bit like things might turn out OK in Libya, and all in all, you could still speak seriously of an Arab Spring, of a democratic opening. After the tide turned in Egypt, jihadis everywhere gave out a giant “I told you so.” We told you that you couldn’t trust elections, we told you that you couldn’t trust the West. We told you they would never let Arabs and Muslims govern themselves.

And at the same time, the authoritarians all over the region, whether they’re Bashar al-Assad of Syria or the Gulf monarchs, had a new spring in their step as well. So in many ways, the coup really returned the region to the kinds of dynamics that we saw before the Arab Spring, where it looked like your choices were extremists on the one side or autocrats on the other.

And that’s the “heads I win, tails you lose” that the autocrats in the region want.

Yeah, that’s the bogeyman for them. It’s, you know, it’s us or al-Qaida. That’s what Mubarak was telling American officials for decades. And for a while, for those 30 months between 2011 and 2013, it looked like there might have been another way.

In terms of practical policy differences, do you see a noticeable difference from Obama to Trump?

You have to separate the president from the rest of the government. I mean, the differences between Obama and Trump are vast, of course, on the level of rhetoric and even on policy, but then you get into the larger question of just how much can one president steer the ship, if you know what I mean. It’s got a momentum all its own. There’s a lot of historic policy and bureaucracy that is quite difficult to shift.

On the other hand, rhetoric has its own weight. If the American president is saying, “We support the principle of self-rule,” that makes a difference. If an American president is saying, “Look, it really bothers us that you’re locking up your human rights activists and not allowing free elections,” that has a kind of weight in the region all its own. And then, of course, we get to the Iran deal.

But in terms of Egypt?

Oh, in terms of Egypt, yeah, it makes a difference. If you ask liberal Egyptians, they will say, yeah, sure, we always knew the American government was cynical. We always knew the American government was going to back Mubarak, but at the same time, when there was a different kind of president, it gave us a margin to operate. You know, the gap between America’s rhetoric and its pragmatism gave us a little bit more leverage that we could use to get somebody out of jail or to stop some torture or to press for some greater free speech rights. If you look back at President George W. Bush, he actually put quite a bit of pressure on Egypt to open up, and in retrospect, whether because of American pressure or not, the last years of Mubarak were a golden age of freedom of expression in Egypt and even political participation.

How would you define Egypt today? Is there anything about Sisi that you think differentiates him from other strongmen in the region or around the world?

Well, the question about Sisi is how strong a strongman is he? He is broadcasting quite a bit of anxiety. He does not seem very confident in his own rule. As soon as someone barely sticks their head above the parapet as a possible challenger at any level, he locks that person up. He’s even locked up other generals who he thought might be questioning him, and he’s changing positions—like his defense minister or his head of general intelligence—in a kind of a nervous way. You know, he recently gave a speech where he was complaining a little bit about some of the hashtags that people are using to criticize him on Twitter. And his insistence on winning both elections with more than 90 percent of the vote: He doesn’t seem very confident in his own staying power, and that makes him distinctive.

They discussed issues of common interest and ways of enhancing them in the fields of defence, exchange of training courses and experiences. They also discussed the latest developments in the region, particularly the Gulf crisis, the crisis in Syria and latest developments in Libya as well as the Palestinian cause. During the meeting, some regional and international issues of interest to both sides were also discussed.

Relieved migrants, mostly from Sudan, express their relief after being saved during an operation which rescued 87 people escaping 'torture' in Libya. They were taken to to the port of Algeciras in Spain.

In 2008 the Westworld economy crashed because for Wall Street moral hazard had become a board game. After blowing the biggest bubble ever enticing the guileless with mortgages they couldn't afford, stockbrokers sliced these loans into derivatives that sold like packaged bologna to guileless pension funds, RRSPs, mutual funds, and 401Ks. European banks bought this toilet paper because, though everyone knew it was a casino bet, if it kept going up, you made money. Then the bubble burst and the bailout began. After one little casino was allowed to symbolically collapse, the American usury houses got a trillion-dollar bailout as the last Bush left the building.

There was the briefest period of defibrillation stimulus to shock the economy out of its death rattle. Then Canada's proto-fascist prime minister turned Toronto into a police state for the 2010 G20 so he and his cronies could cook up some austerity. Yup, the reps for the rich decided poor people would backstop junk traders by surrendering pensions, public health programs, and public infrastructure. People heretofore encouraged to spend like sailors on shore leave got their markers called and downward mobility was the price of the binge at Goldman Sachs. Riot cops in shiny new gear always at the ready!

In the ensuing decade, surprisingly, the rich have gotten way richer, and the poor, strangely, way poorer. Inequality after the Great Recession is at levels unseen since right before the Great Depression. The kids are even flirting with socialism again, much to the chagrin of "opposition" parties like the American "Democrats" and the zombie remnants of "New Labour" in the U.K.

What to do, what to do?

Well, everything old is new again. Like Hollywood, when you are out of ideas, it's time for a remake. Everybody dying to return to Devil's Island in the new version of Papillon? Great. Because you are also going right back to the 1930s when it comes to somebody encouraging you to scapegoat minorities for your economic misfortune.

Extreme intolerance seems to be the 0.0001%'s new tack to ensure the energy of all the growing underclasses are not misdirected at them. This energy might be used for organizing against the root causes of the majority's declining fortunes: the misappropriation of wealth by the super rich through their oligarchy states. Now these states actually encourage outright civil hate. Across Europe, nationalist parties are flogging refugee hate to galvanize xenophobia in the masses. The Brits voted to leave Europe so Poles would stop stealing jobs already offshored to China. Italian nationalists want the arms embargo lifted on Libya so local forces there can kill migrants before they can board boats. Trump hates on Mexicans while paying their army and police forces to keep out Honduran hordes fleeing state violence flowing from the CIA coup d'etat there in 2009. Homophobia makes Russian toxic masculinity state policy.

None of this is an accident. It's a remake. And it's way cheaper than guaranteed basic income!

Sure, 70 years without fascism was nice. The New Deal was great while it lasted. Multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, even a little socialism tempering the worst tendencies of capitalism made things better for a few for a little while. But for too long we thought the only way to go was up. We were told that a rising tide would lift all boats. It didn't. We were told that with the internet we could all be our own bosses. We just Uberized the costs of our own exploitation. We were told that economic disruption was good. But Amazon is just Walmart on steroids. We were told wealth would trickle down. It didn't. We were told that profit is supreme, the market never makes mistakes, the poor are the authors of their own misfortune.

Left to our own devices, the question might be: if Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world, why are his employees relying on food stamps?

But we aren't left to our own devices. We are left with Facebook asking why refugees get free health care and veterans don't, why addicts get free needles but diabetics don't, why "illegal" immigrants get housed when there are homeless veterans everywhere. We are left with a data-gathering machine asking whatever question that Russian attack hackers/Ontario Proud/Proud Boys/Canada First/NRA polarizing memes want you to ask (and share if you agree).

And after you ask their question, maybe you should just reach out locally, and hate somebody.

Just whatever you do, don't ask who really made you poorer. Or the riot police will be called.

Could gaining control of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran (CBI) be one of the main reasons that Iran is being targeted by Western and Israeli powers? As tensions are building up for an unthinkable war with Iran, it is worth exploring Iran’s banking system compared to its U.S., British and Israeli counterparts.

Some researchers are pointing out that Iran is one of only three countries left in the world whose central bank is not under Rothschild control. Before 9-11 there were reportedly seven: Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, and Iran. By 2003, however, Afghanistan and Iraq were swallowed up by the Rothschild octopus, and by 2011 Sudan and Libya were also gone. In Libya, a Rothschild bank was established in Benghazi while the country was still at war.

Islam forbids the charging of usury, the practice of charging excessive, unreasonably high, and often illegal interest rates on loans,and that is a major problem for the Rothschild banking system. Until a few hundred years ago usury was also forbidden in the Christian world and was even punishable by death. It was considered exploitation and enslavement.

« Hello,
dictator! » The president of the European commission thus welcomed the
Hungarian Prime Minister to the Riga summit in 2015. If Senator John McCain had
caused a diplomatic incident earlier when he called Viktor Orbán a “neo-fascist
dictator”, this was just friendly banter for Jean-Claude Juncker. The
contrast in tone of the diktats imposed upon Greece at the very same time by the
Eurogroup was striking: austerity is no joking matter. Just before Syriza came
to power, German Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schaüble warned
that “new elections change nothing about the agreements that the Greek
government has entered into.” For the EU, there is nothing funny about
neoliberalism: economics is too important to be left to the people. Democracy,
however, is worth a good laugh. The burlesque scene in Latvia recalls another
instance of slapstick: in The Great Dictator,
Mussolini slaps Charlie Chaplin’s Hitler on the back: “my brother dictator!” There is nothing funny about neoliberalism: economics is
too important to be left to the people. Democracy, however, is worth a good
laugh.

How can we make sense jointly of these two simultaneous
phenomena – the rise of the far right, in Europe and elsewhere, and the
authoritarian evolution of neoliberal regimes? On the one hand, we have white
supremacy and political xenophobia, from Donald Trump to Viktor Orbán or Matteo Salvini. On the
other, what can be called “democratic
coups”. Remember Greece? #ThisIsACoup: the “democratic” variation of the
coup requires “banks, not tanks.” The same applies to Brazil, from Dilma to
Lula: a military coup was not needed; parliamentary votes and judicial
decisions do the job. Of course, police violence can still play an important
role in the repression of the social movements that resist neoliberal reforms:
France is a case in point. On both sides, public liberties are thereby losing
ground.

Moreover, there is nothing incompatible between
neoliberal policies and far right politics: the EU has now accepted far-right
governments. Compare 2000, with the sanctions against Jorg Haider’s Austria, to
2018, with Sebastian Kurz presiding over the Council of the European Union. Democracy
is not a political criterion any longer. The EU thus subcontracts the handling of the
refugee crisis to Erdoğan’s Turkey and
to Libya’s mafia-like coastguards. Again, France is no exception, especially
when it comes to migrants. It is true that Macron applauded when Trump, under
pressure from all sides, decided to drop his policy of separating undocumented
aliens from their children; but the consequence is that the US will follow the
example of France: children sent with their parents to detention centers.

Macron may have denounced Italian politicians who
“betray asylum”; but his speech
was delivered just as the French Senate was debating his Interior Minister
Gérard Collomb’s bill restricting asylum rights. Indeed, he also raged against
those who “lecture self-righteously” about solidarity with migrants: “look
abroad!” That is the true meaning of the Italian reference in Macron’s
discourse: French immigration policies could be so much worse – think of
Salvini! In solidarity with the new Spanish Premier, Pedro Sanchez, Macron went
so far as to propose sanctions against European States who lack European
solidarity. But France had just refused to open its ports to the Aquarius
rejected by Italy, and finally welcomed in Spain. Never mind contradictions:
Macron soon went on to borrow Salvini’s words, accusing NGOs of “playing
into the hands” of human traffickers. The French president ostensibly
rejects the temptation of “illiberal
democracies” such as Poland and Hungary – but Europhobes no longer have a
monopoly on political xenophobia. These days, Europhiles often follow suit. The
French president is the perfect embodiment of what can be called “neoliberal
illiberalism”. Europhobes no longer have a
monopoly on political xenophobia. These days, Europhiles often follow suit.

“Leprosy”
and neo-fascism

How are we to define today’s “leprosy”? Chantal
Mouffe’s “populist
moment” won’t do if we are to take into account both sides of the coin. The
philosopher advocates
left-wing populism in response to right-wing populism: according to her,
both have a “democratic nucleus” since they are both responses to “the demands
of the popular sectors,” “from the groups who are the main losers of neoliberal
globalization.” One could argue (as I have) about the “popular”
vote for Trump. But in any case, today, not only can we see that neoliberal
leaders like Macron have no qualms about mobilizing xenophobia, but conversely,
populist leaders such as Trump, Orbán, or Erdoğan, promote neoliberal policies. This is why it seems
misleading to argue that voting for right-wing populists is “the expression of
resistances against the post-democratic condition brought about by thirty years
of neoliberal hegemony.”

Contrary to Mouffe who refuses “classifying right-wing
populist parties as ‘extreme-right’ or ‘neo-fascist’,” I argue that it makes
sense to speak of a “neo-fascist moment” of neoliberalism. Today, we encounter
familiar features of historical fascism – such as racism and xenophobia, of
course, but also the blurring of boundaries between right and left, the fascination
for charismatic leaders and the celebration of the nation, the rejection of
elites and the glorification of the masses, contempt for the rule of law and a
taste for violence, to name but a few. Contrary to Mouffe who refuses “classifying right-wing
populist parties as ‘extreme-right’ or ‘neo-fascist’,” I argue that it makes
sense to speak of a “neo-fascist moment” of neoliberalism.

It is interesting to read in this light Cornel
West’s immediate reaction after Trump’s election. To explain this
neo-fascist resurgence, the philosopher pointed out the responsibility of
neoliberal economic policies, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, that Hillary
Clinton was about to continue: who could disagree? But he also writes: “The
neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neo-fascist bang.” Who can
believe that Trump’s neo-fascism put an end to neoliberal policies? Certainly
not Wall Street.

Contrary to West, Wendy
Brown rejects the historical comparison with fascism, and continues favouring
an interpretation in the light of the “stealth revolution” of neoliberalism
that she has powerfully analyzed as an “undoing of the demos”.
According to this political scientist, “despite some resonances with 1930s
fascism, this libertarian authoritarianism is a novel political formation, one
that is an inadvertent effect of neoliberal rationality.” Such a formation “should
not just be reduced to the idea of fascism or populism.”

This
argument complements Robert Paxton’s:
according to the great historian of Vichy, while “it is powerfully tempting to
call the new president of the United States a fascist,” given all the “fascist
staples” of the new regime, if one takes into account his economic
libertarianism, it makes more sense to call him a “plutocrat.”

Umbrella terms

These
are serious objections, because there are indeed real differences between
historical fascism and today’s neo-fascism. But is this not the very definition
of Weberian ideal-types, such as feudalism or bureaucracy? The terms we use to
think about the social world are umbrella terms regrouping empirical realities
from diverse historical contexts – because of their similarities, and despite
their differences. That is how concepts work.

This is
true of fascism or populism, as it is of capitalism or neoliberalism itself. As
Wendy Brown rightly points out, Trump’s protectionism is but a neoliberal variation, just like German ordoliberalism can be approached as “the
other neoliberalism”, despite differences with IMF ideology. In the same
way as there are different forms of neoliberalism, distinct from but related to
traditional economic liberalism, neo-fascism can be approached in its
contemporary specificity with historical echoes. And instead of opposing the
two readings (either neoliberalism or neo-fascism ?) – why not then think of a neo-fascist moment of neoliberalism?

An
approach in terms of “moment” is a way to insist on the historical logic of
such concepts. In other words, there is no necessary link between capitalism
(today neoliberalism) and fascism (here neo-fascism) –any more than there is with
democracy, of course, contrary to the dominant discourse after the fall of the
Berlin Wall. One need only remember that Tony Blair and José Luis Zapatero,
when they converted social democracy to neoliberalism, far from riding the
xenophobic wave, advocated opening the borders to economic migrants. More
recently, the German
Chancellor was both “Kaiser Merkel” in the spring of 2015 (when imposing
ordoliberal austerity on the Syriza government in Greece), and “Mutti Angela”
in the fall (when she opened the borders to over a million Syrian refugees).
Neoliberalism can go both ways. But these moments of liberal illiberalism seem
to belong to the past. The German Chancellor was both “Kaiser Merkel” in the spring of 2015 ... and “Mutti Angela”
in the fall.

Calling a spade a spade

Why
speak of neo-fascism? The answer is pragmatic: because today we need to call a
spade a spade. Refusing to name neo-fascism is a way to refuse acting against
it. The theoretical scruples of a few can be used as a political pretext of
inertia by the many. Euphemizing the harsh reality of contemporary neo-fascism
can become an obstacle when we need to mobilize a kind of anti-fascism that,
far from serving as a democratic alibi for current economic policies, clearly
points out the responsibility of neoliberalism for the rise of neo-fascism. As
a consequence, there is no need to entertain the illusion that populism, which
is a symptom of neoliberalism, might be the cure against it. Conversely, we
have to accept that neoliberals like Macron are no antidotes to the far right:
his immigration policies are not fundamentally different from Salvini’s. Both
defend “Fortress Europe”.

In a
word, there is nothing anachronistic about singing “Bella Ciao” today –
providing that we update its meaning: we should not reserve this anti-fascist treatment
to the current Italian Minister of the Interior, head of the Lega. It equally
applies to his predecessor, Marco
Minniti, from the Democratic Party, and to his French colleague who left
the Socialist Party for Macron’s movement, En Marche – although Gérard
Collomb apparently complains that he is sick and tired of playing the role
of a fascist.

Maybe
these politicians need to be told what they are doing in so many words, in the
hope, if not that their weariness might induce some seachange on their part,
but that ideological clarity will help us develop alternative strategies.

Guardians of the Abyss

Announcing a Standalone Scenario for Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Far over the city towered the great Roman dome of the new museum; and beyond it—across the cryptic yellow Nile that is the mother of aeons and dynasties—lurked the menacing sands of the Libyan Desert, undulant and iridescent and evil with older arcana.
-H.P. Lovecraft, “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs”

Order your own copy of Guardians of the Abyss at your local retailer or online through our website today!

Something stirs beneath the sands of Egypt…

Investigators were gripped by The Eternal Slumber at Gen Con 2018. The decisions, victories, and failures of the brave investigators who took part will shape the story as it continues with The Night’s Usurper at Arkham Nights 2018. These innovative linked scenarios bring together the community like never before, but even if you're unable to take part in the event, you can still witness the day of reckoning when you bring the action home and try your hand at halting the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy.

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Guardians of the Abyss, a standalone scenario that features both the Gen Con 2018 and Arkham Nights 2018 scenarios for Arkham Horror: The Card Game—now available for pre-order at your local retailer on online through our website!

The Eternal Slumber

Your investigation begins in The Eternal Slumber, where a strange disease has taken hold of the citizens of Cairo. Jessie Burke, a government agent working in Egypt, has asked you to help her solve this medical quandary—people across the city are falling into a wakeless slumber, including Jessie’s husband and partner, John. As of yet, there are no known factors that connect the victims, but Jessie hopes that your experience with other… peculiar cases will lead to a crack in the case.

Unfortunately, when you reach the city you meet resistance at every turn. As you scour Cairo for answers, you find many people who want nothing to do with you and worse, you’re being tailed by shadowy figures throughout the city. Whatever is going on here, it is clear that this is more than a simple medical mystery.

Your leads draw you away from the city and into the deserts of Egypt, where a strange force emanates from the sands. Whether this is the cause of all this chaos or another symptom is unclear, but whatever it is, it will not be ignored. Throughout your investigation in Guardians of the Abyss, you will be forced to contend with the strength of the abyss itself as it ebbs and flows like a river. The strength of the abyss at any moment is marked by resources on the scenario reference card. This power has no effect on the game itself, but as it strengthens, so do the forces set against you. For example, the combat strength of a
Creature from the Abyss
(Guardians of the Abyss, 15) is directly linked to the abyss, while the damage dealt by an
Abyssal Revenant
(Guardians of the Abyss, 45) becomes greater with the strength of the abyss. And as the days stretch on, you must take care not to fall into the cursed
Slumber
(Guardians of the Abyss, 51) yourself!

If you or one of your fellow investigators are overcome by the power of the abyss, you may become “Taken by the Abyss” and fall into a comatose state. Should this disaster occur, the strength to the abyss increases and the investigator's fate, if they will ever wake up, falls to those who remain.

Can you find the cure to this medical mystery and awaken the sleepers from their cursed reverie, or will you fall into your own inescapable nightmare? Even if you succeed, will that be the end of your troubles, or is this only the beginning of something far greater and more terrible? And if there is some conspiracy, who would ever believe your claims in this distant land so far from Arkham?

Now, we are pleased to offer you a first look at The Night's Usurper, the second scenario included in Guardians of the Abyss, which will premiere at Arkham Nights 2018!

The Night's Usurper

Disclaimer: Due to the sensitive matter of this ongoing case, this article has undergone official review by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Fantasy Flight Games is happy to cooperate with all investigative proceeding as the Cairo case develops.

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Under Investigation

For your own safety, we must ask you not to pursue this case alone. There will be an official meeting of Arkham’s investigators at Arkham Nights 2018 in Roseville, MN this fall. There, we hope to get to the bottom of the case, but until then, please exercise caution­—keep one eye on the exit, and whatever you do, don’t fall asleep!

Pre-order your copy of Guardians of the Abyss (AHC27) at your local retailer today or on the Fantasy Flight Games website here!

ON BOARD THE AQUARIUS: A humanitarian ship rescued 141 migrants packed onto wooden boats off the coast of Libya on Friday in its first mission since it was caught in a standoff with Italy and Malta over their refusal to let rescued migrants ashore.
When Italy turned the Aquarius away in June and ...

A humanitarian ship rescued 141 migrants packed onto wooden boats off the coast of Libya on Friday in its first mission since it was caught in a standoff with Italy and Malta over their refusal to let rescued migrants ashore.